needed in order to ensure the four-quadrant operation of the converter. The DC bus capacitor provides the required storage of the energy so that the power flow can be controlled and offers filtering for the DC harmonics. The VSC-HVDC system can be built with many VSC topologies and the key ones are presented in Section IV.
The converter is typically controlled through sinusoidal
PWM (SPWM) and the harmonics are directly associated with the switching frequency of each converter leg. Fig. 8 presents the basic waveforms associated with SPWM and the line-to-neutral voltage waveform of the two-level
Fig. 5: Bipolar CSC-HVDC system with one 12-pulse converter per pole.
converter (Fig. 7). Each phase-leg of the converter is connected through a reactor to the AC system. Filters are also included on the AC side to further reduce the
harmonic content flowing into the AC system.
AC 1
AC Filters
AC 3
Converter 1
AC Filters
Converter 3
Converter 2
AC 2
AC Filters
A generalised two AC voltage sources connected via a reactor is shown in Fig. 9. Fig. 10 shows the relative location of the vectors of the two AC quantities and their relationship through the voltage drop across the line reactor (Fig. 9). One vector is generated by the VSC and the other one is the vector of the AC system. At the fundamental frequency the active and reactive powers are
Fig. 6: Multi-terminal CSC-HVDC system – parallel connected.
+ +
Vdc
defined by the following relationships, assuming the reactor between the converter and the AC system is ideal (i.e. lossless):