Abstract
System reliability is a measure of an electric grid system’s ability to deliver uninterrupted service at the proper voltage and frequency. This property of the electric system is commonly affected by critical processes, such as a total blackout. The electric system restoration is a complex process which consists of returning generators, transmission system elements, and restoring load following an outage of the electric system. However, the absence of a generator or unit of black start capabilities may worsen the duration and effects of blackouts, having severe consequences. Black start capability is important as it can reduce the interruption time, decrease the economic loss, and restart the power supply fast and efficiently. In recent years, several works have reported advances about the High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) technology based on the Voltage-Source Converter (VSC) as an attractive and promising technology to increase black start capability. This paper is a review of the current studies of VSC-HVDC as black start power and discusses the advantages and limitations of recent methods. The major points addressed in this paper are as follows: the current theoretical approach of the black start process and the used HVDC technologies, the advantages of VSC-HVDC as black start power, a compressive review of the literature about the black start capabilities using VSC-HVDC technologies, and a description of the main methods recently used to provide an enhancement for restoration processes. Finally, this paper discusses new challenges and perspectives for VSC-HVDC links in order to provide an enhancement for restoration processes.
Highlights
Over the last decades, technological development and research have aimed for the enhancement of the performance, robustness, and security of power grids, which have grown in size and complexity due to the inclusion of new sources of power generation [1]and recent trends in electricity markets [2]
Even though Line-Commutated Converters (LCC) systems are a mature technology that has been used for over 50 years in High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) [49], Self-Commutated Converters have more advantages for mitigating issues related to low-inertia generation [30], which is increasingly being added to grids
Besides the content in the following tables, the proposals covered in depth in this paper show solutions to problems related to active power grids, unlike papers that explore VSCHVDC assistance on the behaviour of passive grids
Summary
Technological development and research have aimed for the enhancement of the performance, robustness, and security of power grids, which have grown in size and complexity due to the inclusion of new sources of power generation [1]. The strategies of control used during the black start requires maintain system frequency stability, system balance, and even facing the unavailability of communication networks [14,15] In both schemes, the restoration of power back to the system is done in an orderly manner, supplying power from the black start unit to the rest of the grid, and can happen simultaneously in various parts [16] by separating the affected zones into islands that will later be synchronized, forming bigger and bigger portions of the grid until total restoration is reached. This paper explores promising proposals that use VSC-HVDC links for black starts, showing the diversity of literature and research that has recently showed how this technology can support grids through frequency, voltage support, control [27,28], transient behavior control [29], power oscillation damping [26,30], and soft-starting schemes [31]. All of the proposals included in this paper are proof of the huge potential that HVDC technologies have for achieving a superior performance on future power grids
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