P-HiL Evaluation of Virtual Inertia Support to the Nordic Power System by an HVDC Terminal

This paper provides an assessment of the effect from virtual inertia provided by an HVDC converter terminal on the Nordic power system. The analysis is based on results from Power-Hardware-in-the-Loop (P-HiL) tests with a laboratory-scale Modular Multilevel Converter (MMC) representing an HVDC terminal interfaced with a real-time phasor simulation of the Nordic grid. The applied control method for providing virtual inertia is utilizing the derivative of the locally measured grid frequency to adapt the power reference for the studied converter terminal. The power injection provided by the converter and the resulting impact on the frequency dynamics of the power system are investigated as a function of the emulated inertia constant and the frequency droop gain. The results demonstrate how the HVDC converter can effectively support the dynamic response of the power system when exposed to large load transients by improving the frequency nadir and reducing the Rate-of-Change-of-Frequency (ROCOF).