Comprehensive Power Flow Analyses and Novel Feedforward Coordination Control Strategy for MMC-Based UPFC

This paper aims to discover the general steady-state operation characteristics, as well as improving the dynamic performance, of the modular multilevel converter (MMC)-based unified power flow controller (UPFC). To achieve this, first, we established a detailed power flow model for MMC-based UPFC containing each critical part and made qualitative and graphical analyses combining 2-dimensional operation planes and 3-dimensional spatial curve surfaces comprehensively to derive general power flow principles and offer necessary references for regulating UPFC. Furthermore, to achieve better performance, we designed a feedforward control strategy for the shunt and series converters of UPFC, both comprising two feedforward control blocks with the introduction of necessary compensating branches, and analyzed the performance in complex and time domain, respectively. The proposed power flow principles and control strategies were validated by a (power systems computer aided design) PSCAD model of 220 kV double-end system; the results reveal the MMC-based UPFC can realize the power flow principles and improve the control speed, stability, and precision of the power flow regulations under various conditions.