Preparing for an Increase in Inverter-based Resources in New Zealand

The global energy market is transitioning towards a renewable energy dominated system to mitigate risks associated with climate change. New Zealand has already committed to reach net zero for long-lived gases by 2050 and 100% renewable electricity by 2030. Inverter based resources (IBRs) will act a major role in achieving this aspirational target in New Zealand power system. The long transmission network and remote generation can impose different challenges when incorporating high penetration of IBRs. In this paper, the impact of IBRs operated as grid-following (GFL) and grid-forming (GFM) inverters in a weak part of New Zealand power system is studied. Several study cases with different inverter configurations are carried out in electromagnetic (EMT) simulations to study the impact of IBRs. The results from the studies show that IBRs that operate as GFM provide high stability in both weak and strong parts of the power system.