Inertia and Primary Frequency Provisions of PLL-Synchronized VSC HVDC When Attached to Islanded AC System

The islanded scenarios of voltage source converter (VSC) high-voltage DC (HVDC) directly supplying power to islanded loads or connecting to wind farm are becoming popular, in which some new issues are required to be further addressed. While several control strategies have been studied, to the authors’ best knowledge, few have investigated the potential capability of VSC HVDC using the typical phase-locked loop (PLL)-synchronized vector control (PLLSynVC) to address islanded operation issues. To explore the potential capability of the typical PLLSynVC in islanded system, this paper proposes a frequency regulation scheme (FRS), including inertia and primary frequency control, for the PLL-synchronized VSC HVDC based on the motion equation concept. By adding the FRS, the VSC HVDC using the PLLSynVC, similar to a synchronous generator from the view of the phase motion equation, not only can self-maintain the frequency stable in an islanded system, but also naturally avoids the transition of control operation modes without changing the basic control structure. Furthermore, based on the developed phase motion equation, the inertia characteristics of VSC HVDC with the FRS is studied, which synthetically considers the impact of different controllers and PLL, and makes VSC HVDC's manifested inertia clear. The effectiveness of FRS and inertia analysis results is verified by time-domain simulations.