On Power-system Benefits, Main-circuit Design, and Control of StatComs with Energy Storage

Static synchronous compensation (StatCom) is an application that utilizes a voltage source converter (VSC) to provide instantaneous reactive power support to the connected power system. Conventionally, StatComs are employed for reactive power support only. However, with the integration of energy storage (ES) into a StatCom, it can provide active power support in addition to the reactive power support. This thesis deals with the integration of ES into StatComs. The investigation involves the following aspects: possible benefits for power systems, main circuit design, and control strategies. As the basis of the investigation, a control scheme is proposed for two-level VSCs. It is a novel flux modulation scheme combined with the well-known deadbeat current control. The current controller is capable of controlling the positive sequence, the negative sequence, and the offset components of the converter current. With flux modulation, all the three above-mentioned components of the bus flux are controllable. This differs from the conventional voltage modulation scheme, in which only the positive and negative sequence components of the bus voltage are controllable. The difference between the proposed flux modulation scheme and the voltage modulation scheme is investigated regarding saturation of transformers in the connected system during fault recovery. The investigation shows that by controlling the offset component of the bus flux, the transformer saturation problem can be mitigated to a certain extent. The possible benefits of the additional active power support of StatComs are investigated through several case studies. Different active power compensation schemes are proposed. First, active power compensation for sudden load changes in weak systems is investigated. The proposed control strategies are verified through computer simulations and through experiments in a real-time simulator. It is shown that with active power compensation, both the phase jumps and magnitude variations in the voltage at the PCC can be reduced significantly. Secondly, the power compensation of cyclic loads is investigated. The results show that the power quality at the connection point can be improved regarding both phase jumps and magnitude variations. In the third case study, the fault-recovery performance of an example system is investigated, showing that improved performance can be achieved by the additional active power support. ES devices such as capacitors, supercapacitors, and batteries exhibit considerable variation in the terminal voltage during a charging/discharging cycle. A direct connection of ES devices to the dc side of a VSC requires a higher voltage rating of the VSC. Thus, the cost of the VSC has to be increased. In this thesis, a dual thyristor converter topology is proposed to interface ES devices with the dc side of the VSC. First, a cost comparison is performed to compare the total cost of the whole system with and without the proposed interface topology. A cost comparison between various types of ES is also presented, providing a guideline for the choice of ES at energy levels where several alternatives exist. Then, the dynamics of systems with the proposed interface topology are investigated. Control strategies are proposed and verified by computer simulations. Two different control methods for the dual-thyristor converter are compared.