Offshore Power System Micro-Grid Design
Abstract
Micro-grid based power systems will have a significant roll in the development of the modern renewable energy power grid. A subset of this distributed generation system involves offshore micro-grid systems. These offshore micro-grids will consist of offshore generation, power conversion, energy storage, underwater power transmission, grid interconnection, and the inclusion of either onshore or offshore loads.
Designing these systems is very different from conventional generation due to the intermittency of the renewable resources and the underwater power transmission. The intermittency of renewable resources can result in frequency fluctuations and times where there may not be any power generation. This effect can be mitigated through use of energy storage devices, grid interconnection, and power electronics. Underwater power transmission can also be a challenge due to the potentially large capacitance, and thus reactive power requirements of the underwater cable.
Studying the line parameters, harmonic propagation, developing simplified models, the power electronic conversion process, the inclusion of energy storage devices, modelling offshore generator clusters, and analyzing the economics of the micro-grid system to determine if AC or DC power transmission would be optimal are all elements required in the design and analysis of an offshore power system micro-grid.