Offshore DC Grids: Impact of Topology on Power Flow Control

O. Despouys*
*RTE, France, olivier.despouys@rte-france.com
Keywords: Power Flow Control, DC Grid, Offshore Wind.

whether wind spillage is allowed or not; since the resulting

topologies will differ, this has a significant impact on possible
power flow controls, but also on the DCG controllability
(partial or complete). Last, Section 5 suggests adapting simple
AC principles to enable resistance modulation in order to
augment the DCG controllability, hence limiting offshore
wind spillage.

Abstract
This paper illustrates how dedicated droop controls may take
advantage of an offshore DC grid topology to implement
different power flow policies, without any communication or
master control. The issue of DC grid extension is also tackled
with a special emphasis on wind spillage: a process to
synthesize spatially correlated winds is described and used to
assess the value for different extensions and ratings. Last, a
resistance modulation device is suggested as a supplementary
power flow controller, for significant wind spillage reduction.

2 Spatially correlated wind speed modelling

Offshore wind modelling is required in the current study to
serve two main purposes: as will been later illustrated, wind
regimes and their correlation due to geographical nearness is
necessary to quantify the expected wind spillage as a function
of the DCG ratings (economical assessment of a grid
extension, for instance); furthermore, synthesizing sets of
spatially correlated wind speeds will help to illustrate DCG
power flow controls in a more realistic way than using simple
random figures for power injections.

1 Introduction
In order to meet European governments targets for renewable
energy by 2020, large offshore wind generation is expected in
the coming years. High-Voltage Direct Current (HVDC)
provides a suitable technology to enable massive integration
of offshore wind farms into AC onshore grids, thanks to its
long distance transmission capability, flexibility over power
control and AC networks decoupling capability.

Wind speeds are synthesized as random variates distributed

according to a Weibull distribution; the scale and shape
parameters are chosen to fit actual offshore wind measures. In
addition, an inter-area correlation matrix (C) is introduced to
represent the spatial dependence of wind regimes. The
correlation between pairs of wind farms is computed using an
exponential decay function, as suggested by [2]. The
synthesis of multivariate random variable representing the
wind speeds is as follows:

DC Grids (DCG) based on Voltage Source Converters (VSC)

are being widely investigated to integrate multiple offshore
wind farms dispersed over wide areas into AC onshore
networks. In addition to improved reliability and security of
supply, and optimisation of AC and DC transmission
infrastructures, DCG are expected to provide additional
features compared to point-to-point connexions, such as:
Controlled wind power transfer (with possible
mitigation of wind power fluctuations),
Interconnection (i.e. using the DC assets to control
power exchanges between AC onshore networks),
Ancillary services (such as voltage support,
frequency support to onshore AC grids, etc).

1.
2.
3.

This paper focuses on innovative controls for the first two

items (or, more generally, offshore DCG power flow) based
on studies which are being carried out in the EU funded
TWENTIES project [1]. Section 2 provides some information
on spatially correlated wind speed modelling, which will be
used in the paper to synthesize relevant wind generation for
various DC power flow controls. In Section 3, a DCG is
introduced which is considered as a realistic first topology
(H grid); it is used to describe how dedicated voltage droop
controls may be implemented to achieve specific power flow
behaviours, all of which being not possible in any general
grid. Section 4 is focussed on DCG extension, depending on

4.

A correlation matrix C0 is initialised with C (i.e. the

expected correlation);
Sequences of gaussian multivariate values are generated,
and multiplied by the Cholesky decomposition of (C0), in
order to get C0-correlated multivariate sequences;
The correlated sequences of gaussian multivariate values
are successively translated into uniform variates, and
then into Weibull ones by using respectively the
cumulative distribution functions for the normal and the
Weibull distributions;
The effective correlation (Ceff) of the resulting wind
speeds is computed and compared to the desired one (C).
Indeed, the successive conversions from gaussian to
uniform and Weibull distributions do not preserve
correlation in theory (due to non-linear transformations).
In case Ceff and C are too different, C0 is slightly adapted
to compensate the measured bias, and we iterate back in
step 2. Yet, in practical terms, few iterations (if any) were
necessary to achieve satisfying results.

Hence, assuming n wind farms, this process enables the

synthesis of any number m of sets Si={wij} (with 1 i m,
and 1
j
n) of wind speeds which fit two likelihood
constraints:
1 j n, {wij}1 i m is a set of offshore wind
speeds which refer to the jth wind farm, and complies
with the density function of offshore wind regimes
throughout the year.
1 i m, {wij}1 j n is a set of offshore wind
speeds which complies with the spatial correlation of
the n wind regimes.

VSC), the wind farms (WF), and the AC grids (both offshore
islands and onshore mainland).
This topology can be easily extended to a backbone
topology with a similar layout, as will be illustrated in
Section 4. From a geographical standpoint, this corresponds
to the installation of wind farms along the shore (such as the
Atlantic Wind Connection project [4], for instance).
3.1 P-V droop control: general principle
While the offshore stations (WF-VSC) are operated to control
the offshore AC island frequency and voltage magnitude
(hence they are unable to provide any direct control on the
DC side), the onshore converters will most likely be
responsible for onshore AC voltage support (or reactive
power injection) and DC voltage control.
Considering one single onshore converter as a slack which
absorbs and regulates all power variations for the whole DC
grid (while the others would control the current or power) was
initially proposed as a simple approach. However, it suffers
from significant drawbacks: for instance, this specific
converter must be rated to handle all power changes occurring
across the DCG. Oversizing the converter (and reinforcing the
AC network it connects to) would lead to a significant cost
increase. In addition, the resulting variability for the
corresponding AC injection would be rather inconvenient to
handle for a transmission operator.
Consequently, it is commonly agreed that DC voltage control
should be shared among several onshore converters. Hence,
DC Power-Voltage P-V) droop control is generally proposed
[5, 6]. This control imposes a linear relationship between the
active power exchanged with the AC grid and the voltage at
the DC bus, as sketched in Figure 2.

It should be stressed that contrary to the wind synthesis

process described in [3], the result is sets of correlated wind
regimes, but not correlated time-series of wind speeds (since
the variations of wind over time is a kind of information
which is not required for our study).
Last, wind speeds are easily translated into offshore wind
power using the wind-to-power transfer characteristics of an
existing offshore wind turbine (rated for 3MW for this study).

3 First DC grid
The DCG connects remote offshore wind farms (representing
as many AC islands) to one or more mainland AC network(s).
Various topologies have already been discussed for offshore
DC grids. Yet, most of them take implicitly for granted the
fact that offshore grids would be raised from scratch,
regardless of pre-existing connections to the shore.
Contrary to this, a more realistic approach when designing a
DCG is to consider that, since large investments come into
play, a DC network would most likely be built up step by
step, based on existing DC connections. Hence, assuming the
existence of a point-to-point DC link to transmit offshore
wind power, a simple yet flexible structure was proposed in
the TWENTIES project [1], which is illustrated in this paper.
The generic topology described hereafter is referred to as the
H grid, where direct point-to-point connections of offshore
wind farms are linked by DC ties as sketched in Figure 1.

Figure 2: DC Power- Voltage droop characteristic.

In addition, [6] proposes to combine this Power-Voltage
droop characteristic with fixed power control as a possible
enhancement, but the basic principle remain the same, as for
the major advantages of the droop control: no centralized
master control or communication is required between the
converters to accommodate for wind power variations; in
addition, this high-level control applies for multi-vendor
converters with different ratings, and it is easily operated

Figure 1: The H grid topology.

The basic subsystems composing the overall AC/DC system
are: the DC cables, the onshore grid-side VSC converters
(GS-VSC), the offshore wind farm side converters (WF-

Wind power mitigation. Another interesting behaviour is to

use the DCG to mitigate all wind power injections, so that
onshore converters get exactly the same amount of power.
One of the main interest with this control is that mitigating
different wind power sources leads to more constant
injections on the AC network (all the more when the wind
farms are numerous and geographically spread).
As for the previous one, this behaviour is simply achieved by
controlling the H grid mid-points voltages (Bi). Yet, the
principle is to use the onshore converters DC voltage control
to force the current to circulate through the DC tie (B1-B2)
which constitutes the common mitigation branch, as will be
illustrated in Section 4.2.

from a Dispatch Center [5]; last, any power imbalance

resulting from a contingency (loss of a converter, for
example) or intermittent energy supply is automatically
recovered, up to the others remaining capability.
3.2 Dedicated P-V droop controls for specific behaviours
The P-V droop is a generic control enabling to share the DC
voltage regulation amongst a set of converters with no
requirement for a master control or any communication
between the converters. However, the implementation of
dedicated P-V droop controls to share offshore wind power
according to a pre-defined policy for all onshore converters is
rarely discussed (if ever).
In the remaining of this section, we discuss how dedicated PV droop controls may be implemented to lead to different
strategies with respect to onshore power injections, regardless
of the offshore wind conditions. The principles are sketched
based on the H grid topology, and will be illustrated in
Section 4.2 on a more complex DCG. These behaviours also
enable simpler operations for Dispatch Centers, since only the
mid-point DC voltage should be set (instead of LRSP, slope
and active power as described in [5]).

Superimposing inter-area power exchange. The previous

power injection policies are examples of dedicated P-V droop
controls, for which the slope of the P-V characteristic is
automatically adjusted depending on the DC system (cables
resistance, converter losses) and the DC voltage; in addition,
the voltage input parameter is set for the H grid mid-points.
Hence, considering this is a no-load reference voltage, the
implementation for any of those controls is straightforward,
since a Dispatch Center should only provide the reference
voltage as a set-point:

Direct point-to-point injection. This behaviour ensures that

the overall wind power generated by the ith wind farm (which,
referring to Figure 1, is transmitted by WS-VSCi to the DCG)
is fully injected to the AC onshore mainland network by the
GS-VSCi converter (apart from the losses). Hence, the DCG
behaves as if it was a set of radial wind farm connections
(which would make sense for different producers to sell
energy to their respective national markets, for instance), yet
with an additional interconnection feature, if required.
To ensure this behaviour, the P-V droop control should be
designed so that it controls the voltage for the H grid midpoints (Bi), rather than at the onshore converters DC
connection point (Ci). This leads to a non-linear P-V droop
characteristic (in red, Figure 3) since the slope depends on the
DC voltage.

Figure 4: Implementation of a dedicated P-V droop control

for the H grid topology.
Given the specific topology of the H grid, both the point-topoint injection and wind power mitigation behaviours may be
complemented with a steady inter-area power exchange
between GS-VSC1 and GS-VSC2. This is easily controlled by
setting the DC voltage orders for the onshore converters,
according to Equation 1:
(1)

Pmax limit

Vdc
limit

An illustration of how an inter-area exchange may be

superimposed (and how this, in turn, requires supplementary
constraints not to exceed the converters ratings) will be
provided in Section 4.2.

Pmin limit
Application to other DCG. It should be emphasized that the
ability to implement similar behaviours using P-V droop
controls relies on the DCG topology. For instance, assuming
the same layout as in Figure 1, but where the B1-B2 is
replaced by two new ones: A1-C2 and A2-C1, the direct pointto-point injection policy is not feasible without resorting to a
master control to monitor in real-time the offshore wind
generation, and to continuously adapt the DC voltage
reference value accordingly.

Figure 3: P-V droop characteristics: dedicated point-to-point

injection (plain), and linear approximation (dashed).

wind farms (for the sake of simplicity, we assume C3 is

equidistant from them), and on the ratings of the two new
cables (expressed as a ratio k of the total WF3 capacity). The
wind spillage is computed using 10.000 correlated wind
samples for each distance/rating cross-combination, thanks to
the method exposed in Section 2. Since all power flows are
not controllable on this layout, it is not possible to push
WF3 current toward the most appropriate node C1 or C3
depending on remaining capacity, hence wind spillage is
relatively high, and cannot be limited by increasing the cables
capacity beyond a certain threshold. Section 5 describes how
power flow controlling devices would significantly improve
wind spillage.

4 H grid extension
Assuming an existing H grid as depicted in Section 3, we
discuss in the current one the possible extensions of such a
DCG in order to connect a new offshore wind farm.
4.1 Wind spillage illustration
National or regional grid codes may differ with respect to the
capacity requirements to connect a new wind farm. For
instance, RTE (the French TSO) has to ensure fully rated
connections (i.e. the connexion has to be designed for the
maximum export capacity of the wind farm). In other
countries where wind spillage is allowed, guidelines provide
indicators to estimate the optimal connection capacity (lower
than the maximum wind farm generation capacity), depending
for instance on the wind farm profile [7].

This example is not intended to assess a break-even point

beyond which wind spillage is economically sound: obviously
enough, the results should be considered on a case-by-case
basis since highly dependent on the examined parameters
(new connection ratings, distance between wind farms), and
the assumptions (rating of the existing DCG, distance
between WF1 and WF2, capacities of the wind farms etc.), not
to mention the cost for unsupplied energy. However, this
gives a rough idea of the possible benefits of using as much as
possible the existing assets when connecting a new wind
farm, if wind spillage is an option.

To quantify possible wind spillage depending on cable

ratings, we consider an already existing H grid described as
follows (Figure 5).

4.2 Prohibiting wind spillage: possible grid extensions

This section illustrates possible H grid extensions to connect a
new wind farm (WF3) with the ratings previously indicated in
Section 4.1, assuming that wind spillage is not allowed or
reveals economically unsatisfactory. As a consequence, WF3
must be connected to the shore using a supplementary DC
path, instead of re-using the existing assets (unless the H grid
was initially oversized).

Figure 5: H grid extension with WF3 (wind spillage allowed).

The initial H grid is formed with two fully rated DC links (A1C1, 1.2GW; and A2-C2, 1GW) connecting two wind farms
which respective capacities are 1.2GW and 1GW; the
capacity of the B1-B2 tie is not relevant for this illustration.
The distance between the two existing wind farms (WF1 and
WF2) is 200km.

Figure 6: Wind spillage estimate for various cable ratings.

Figure 6 provides an estimate for the average wind power
spilled when connecting a new wind farm (WF3, rated for
800MW) using two cables C1-C3 and C2-C3 as depicted in
Figure 5, depending on the distance between C3 and the other

Figure 7: H grid extensions without wind spillage (dotted):

backbone (top) and meshed backbone (bottom) layouts.

control suddenly raises the DC voltage (see Figure 9) so that

the power injection never exceeds 1GW; thus, the excess of
power is automatically shared between the two remaining
converters (around t=300s). As soon as this constraint does no
longer apply, the initial behaviour takes over.

Two possible layouts are sketched on Figure 7, where dotted

lines represent new cables and converters to connect WF3 to
the existing DCG. The main benefits of the meshed version of
the backbone (compared to the tree-like one on top of Figure
7) are: superior interconnection capacity between the three
AC connection points of the DCG; ability to operate the DCG
still as a DCG (with interconnection capability) in N-1
condition. Yet, both topologies may be used to provide
similar power flow controls, as illustrated in the following.
Considering the meshed backbone extension with the
following parameters:
- DC voltage: 320kV DC
- Converters and wind farm ratings as indicated in
Figure 7
- Cable resistance (): A1-B1: 0.6; A2-B2: 0.5; A3-B3:
0.6; B1-B2: 0.4; B1-B3: 0.7; B1-C1: 0.3; B2-B3: 0.6;
B2-C2: 0.5; B3-C3: 1.2.
An implementation of the controls described for the H grid (in
Section 3.2) in the meshed backbone extension was realised
in Scilab using the above parameters, with correlated wind
speeds synthesized as shown in Section 2. Due to space
limitations, only two examples are presented below.

Figure 9: Point-to-point behaviour (with 200MW inter-area

exchange). DC voltages at Ci (top), Bi (mid.), Ai (bottom).

Direct point-to-point injection with constant inter-area

power exchange. This simulation illustrates the behaviour
presented in Section 3.2, in which the P-V droop is tuned so
that all onshore converters receive automatically the offshore
wind power from the respective offshore converters they are
directly connected to. In addition to that, we impose a
constant 200MW power exchange from both GS-VSC1 and
GS-VSC3 to GS-VSC2.

Mitigation (without inter-area power exchange). This

simulation illustrates the P-V droop control designed to
enable power mitigation, applied on the same network.

Figure 8: Point-to-point behaviour (with 200MW inter-area

exchange). Plain (offshore) and dotted (onshore) power
curves are paired by colour.

Figure 10: Power mitigation behaviour. Offshore wind power

(top), and corresponding onshore injections (bottom).
As depicted in Figure 10, each onshore converter injects at
any time one third of the total offshore power, up to its
maximum capacity. Hence, GS-VSC3 increases the DC
voltage around t=320s in order to cope with its power ratings
(800MW); from this moment, the two others share exactly the
remaining power, until GS-VSC2 reaches in turn its maximum
capacity (1GW) around t=330s. This situation lasts about
100s, before the mitigation behaviour becomes effective
again. The same causes lead to same effects at t=710s.

As illustrated in Figure 8, for each pair (GS-VSCi, WSVSCi)i=1,2,3, the P-V droop control enables to reproduce
exactly offshore wind power fluctuation on the onshore side
using local measurements only (offshore and onshore power
curves are paired by colour). Yet, the corresponding power
curves are translated, as a consequence of the supplementary
200MW power injection from GS-VSC1 and GS-VSC3 to GSVSC2. Taking into account the ratings of GS-VSC2, the droop

5 Extending the power flow control with different grid extensions and ratings with respect to possible
wind spillage, a process used to generate geographically
resistance modulation devices

correlated wind speeds is described first. As an illustration,

expected wind spillage values are computed for a simple DC
grid extension. Depending on the associated cost for
unsupplied energy and local connection requirements,
different DC grid topologies may therefore be preferred.
The article also illustrates (through simulations run on a
meshed 6-terminal grid) how dedicated Power-Voltage droop
controls may take advantage of the grid topology to
implement specific power flow policies (such as mitigating
variable generation, for instance) relying only on local
measurements. Yet, this does not apply to all DC grids: the
topology has an impact on which behaviours may be
implemented without resorting to a master control or
communication.
Last, all DC layouts do not allow for complete power flow
control due to the meshing (whatever the kind of DC voltage
control). An adaptation of the AC impedance modulation
principle is suggested which, if used in partially controlled
DC grids, would enable significant wind spillage savings.

The H grid presented in Figure 1 and the two extensions in

Figure 7 (backbone and meshed backbone layouts) are fully
controllable using only onshore converters for DC voltage
control: in any DC cable, power flow control is achieved with
appropriate voltage set-points from the onshore converters.
On contrary, it is not possible to precisely control power in
each DC cable for some topologies (such as the one depicted
in Figure 5) due to the meshing and the large number of
cables compared to the number of onshore converters.
Partial power flow control may result in overloads. In such
situations, [8] shows to what extend the use of supplementary
DC power flow control (PFC) device may increase the region
of operation for a DCG, by extending power flow flexibility.
The authors also propose a thyristor-based converter to
achieve this PFC feature.
In our study, we also considered similar ideas (by adapting to
the DCG a series impedance modulation device [9],
composed of electromechanical and power-electronic
switches to connect/disconnect sub-conductors), yet from a
slightly different standpoint: indeed, using PFC devices on
partially controlled DCG should reduce (or even eliminate)
wind spillage, hence making some topologies such as the one
depicted in Figure 5 more cost-effective. To assess this idea,
new wind spillage estimates were computed on the same
topology, yet assuming PFC devices on branches C1-C3 and
C2-C3, and compared to the previous estimates from Figure 6.
As expected (Figure 11), significant gains are achieved using
PFC devices, especially with higher cables ratings (which
enable greater flexibility for power dispatch on the grid).

Acknowledgements
This ongoing work is part of the European TWENTIES
project, funded within the 7th Framework Program (FP7).

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Figure 11: Wind spillage estimate for various cable ratings,

with (plain) and without (dotted) PFC devices.

6 Conclusions
Based on ongoing work in the European project TWENTIES,
this paper highlights power flow issues for an offshore DC
grid connecting intermittent energy sources (wind turbines) to
the AC mainland grid. In order to assess the value for