Economic Assessments of LFAC and HVDC Transmissions for Large Offshore Wind Farms

Abstract Offshore wind farms extend a distance from an onshore grid to increase their generating power, but long distance and high power transmissions raise a lot of cost challenges. LFAC (Low Frequency AC) transmission is a new promising technology in high power and low cost power transmission fields against HVDC (High Voltage DC) and HVAC (High Voltage AC) transmissions. This paper presents an economic comparison of LFAC and HVDC transmissions for large offshore wind farms. The economic assessments of two different transmission technologies are analyzed and compared in terms of wind farm capacities (600 MW and 900 MW) and distances (from 25 km to 100 km) from the onshore grid. Based on this comparison, the economic feasibility of LFAC is verified as a most economical solution for remote offshore wind farms. Keywords: LFAC, HVDC, Offshore, wind farm I. INTRODUCTION In recent years, energy systems based on wind power have rapidly enlarged their application areas, especially towards large offshore wind farms (over 100 MW) and micro grid systems. The conventional onshore wind farms have small power generation and short distance power transmission to a power grid. However, for a large remote wind farms, a new power transmission system is required to provide high energy density and low loss power transmission characteristics with low investments. So, how to connect large remote wind farms to the onshore micro grid with low power losses and economic benefits is the prime concerns of researchers, and its economic power system and wind farm layouts for transmitting high power and long distance has gained more attentions. The conventional HVAC (High Voltage AC) system consists of wind generators, transformers, transmission cables and reactive power compensators, and the generated power is converted to a very high voltage (154 kV or 345 kV) by transformers. The HVAC power system transmits the power through 3 cores XPLE cables through underwater, but the transmission distance of the HVAC power system is the most critical factor against power transmission capability because reactive power losses are proportional to the distance. Therefore, HVAC transmission system is not adequate to long distance large offshore wind farms. Recently, new technologies for power systems have been reported [1]-[15] to provide alternative ways to maximize the power transmission capability. The most outstanding technology is HVDC power system, which has high economic benefits for long distant applications because HVDC power system has no limitation of the transmission capability. HVDC Transmission does not suffer from the reactive losses found in the transmission of HVAC system. However, in order to transmit DC power from a remote wind farms the generated AC power must be converted to the DC power and must be converted back to the AC power for a grid connection. Converting the AC power into the DC power requires an expensive AC to DC converter station to be installed at the remote wind farm area as well as a DC to AC power converter station at a receiving end, prior to the grid. An alternative technology is LFAC (Low Frequency AC) transmission system. LFAC transmission system uses lower frequency (50/3 Hz or 60/3 Hz) than a grid frequency (50 or 60 Hz) and requires no offshore power converter stations but an onshore frequency converter station. LFAC transmission system has an ability to extend a transmission distance and capability rather than the conventional HVAC transmission system. However, LFAC system can generate some audible noises and have transformer saturation and size problems. To adopt a best power system topology for large remote offshore wind farms, an economic analysis about HVDC and LFAC system should be performed. However, economic investments are directly dependent on a power system configuration, a distance and transmission capability. Therefore, this paper proposes HVDC and LFAC power system configurations and presents an economic assessments and comparison of LFAC and HVDC transmissions for large offshore wind farms. The economic assessments of two different transmission technologies are analyzed based on the proposed power configurations and compared in terms of wind farm’s capacities (600 MW and 900 MW) and distances (from 25 km to 100 km) from the onshore grid. From the comparison, the economic feasibility of LFAC is verified as a most economical solution for the large offshore wind farms.