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Hydro‐Québec has identified wide‐area control system as a key initiative able to significantly increase the voltage stability of its grid. In this context, an innovative project for wide‐area and local voltage control of shunt compensators was initiated. Its main objective is to implement a closed‐loop control system on Hydro‐Québec's network to optimise the reactive power support from the dynamic shunt compensators. The outcome of this project is the 'global and local control of compensators' (GLCCs) system which is based on synchrophasor technology and intelligent electronics devices. Applied to each shunt compensator of Hydro‐Québec's network, this robust voltage control system measures voltage variations in the load area and adjusts the operation set point of each shunt compensator accordingly, thus avoiding voltage collapse resulting from extreme contingencies. The GLCC control solution was intensively tested in simulation using PSSE software. Moreover, a pilot project was commissioned on a test bench replica of the system and also tested in real time using Hydro‐Québec's Hypersim digital simulator. Field tests of the GLCC were conducted on a −230/ + 660 MVars static vars compensator. The results of this pilot project were deemed conclusive and the deployment of the new voltage control system has been initiated by Hydro‐Québec. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Flexible AC transmission system devices provide the opportunity to improve the usage of the current transmission facilities by controlling network flows and nodal voltages. The optimal steady‐state settings of these devices can be determined using optimal power flow calculations. However, this requires knowledge of the system parameters, generation settings and loads. A two‐stage regression‐based control scheme is proposed to determine the optimal settings of thyristor‐controlled series compensators (TCSCs) with the objective to optimally utilise the current transmission system in the presence of renewable energy resources. A regression function describing the relationship between a set of key measurements and the optimal device settings is determined in the offline simulation. This function is then used to calculate the optimal device settings by only receiving the information from a limited number of key measurements without solving the OPF problem in the online operation. Studies are carried out with TCSCs in three‐test systems, the IEEE 14‐bus system, a 28‐bus system and the IEEE 118‐bus system. The simulation results with one, two and four TCSCs are presented, illustrating the performance of the proposed regression‐based control scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voltage-sourced converter (VSC)-based static synchronous compensators (STATCOMs) are used for voltage regulation in transmission and distribution systems. Unlike PWM-controlled STATCOMs, angle-controlled STATCOMs are switched at line frequency to limit the system losses. In recent years, angle-controlled STATCOMs have been deployed by utilities for the purpose of transmission system voltage regulation, voltage stability improvement, and increasing operational functionality. Despite the superior feature on voltage waveform quality and efficiency, the practical angle-controlled STATCOMs suffer from the over-current (and trips) and possible saturation of the interfacing transformers caused by negative sequence current during unbalanced conditions and faults in the utility. This paper specifically proposes a control structure to improve the angle-controlled STATCOMs performance under unbalanced conditions and faults. The main improvement is a substantial decrease in the negative sequence current and dc-link voltage oscillations under power system faults by the proposed control. This eliminates the need to redesign the STACOM power components to operate under fault current and dc-link voltage oscillations. The proposed control structure is designed based on adding appropriate oscillations to the conventional angle-controller output that is the control angle by which the VSC voltage vector leads/lags the line voltage vector. Since this control structure uses two angles for controlling the VSC output voltage, it is called dual angle control (DAC). PSCAD/EMTDC and experimental results verify the validity of the proposed control structure under unbalanced system conditions and faults. The experiments were conducted on a transient network analyzer, a unique hardware-based flexible ac transmission system simulator which was designed to study system faults and transients for a 2 × 100 MVA STATCOM field installation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

STATCOM is a FACTS controller that is used in power systems to regulate the line voltage, enhance the power transmission capacity and extend the transient stability margin. STATCOM is conventionally realized by a voltage-source converter; however, being a current injection device, its performance can be improved when realized by a current-source converter (CSC) that can generate a controllable current directly at its output terminals. In this paper, a STATCOM based on the current-source converter topology is proposed. The nonlinear model of the current-source converter, which is the source of the difficulties in the controller design, has been modified to a linear model through a novel modeling technique. The proposed modeling technique is not based on the linearization of a set of nonlinear equations around an operating point. Instead, the power balance equation and a nonlinear input transformation are used to derive a linear model independent of the operating point. This model acts as the basis for the design of a decoupled state-feedback controller. The proposed STATCOM has been simulated using the PSCAD/EMTDC package. The simulation results show that a CSC-based STATCOM can result in excellent current and voltage waveforms as well as very short response time while operating at a low switching frequency. This makes the proposed scheme suitable for high power applications. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]