Public projects

WindOptTool- Development of an expert system for the analyses, the assessment and the optimization of the grid integration of wind-power plants

How can wind farms be developed optimally despite the enormous technical complexity? The institute EneSys of the Ruhr-University of Bochum (RUB) and the company Avasition GmbH are dealing with this question within the joint research project ‘WindOptTool’.

As one major part of the German ‘Energiewende’, the importance of the usage of wind power is increasing continuously. Wind-power plants with higher power rating and larger wind farms are realized to achieve a sustainable power supply. In this scope, an adequate and smart asset design and planning is indispensable. Due to the rising grid-integration requirements and diverse other impacts like e.g. the stochastic wind appearance and the interactions between wind-power plants, adequate design and planning is more and more challenging.

This is where the project ‘WindOptTool’ comes into. An expert system is designed in which the knowhow for all relevant components of wind farms is bundled. Based on the features of the expert system, possible critical interactions of subsystems can be identified in an early project phase. Optimization suggestions concerning the design and dimensioning of the different components can cope the identified problems. Thus, the planned and designed assets are getting more efficient, more reliant and, with this, more economically viable.
 
Within the joint research project, the institute for ‘Power Systems Technology and Power Mechatronics’ of the RUB and the company ‘Avasition GmbH’ are participating partners. The project kick-off took place at the RUB under the direction of the project coordinator Prof. Dr.-Ing. Constantinos Sourkounis on Dezember the 19th 2016. The project volume is greater than one million euro and the project duration is three years.

The joint research project is funded by the European Union and the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia within the scope of the European fond for regional development (EFRE) 2014-2020 ‘Investitionen in Wachstum und Beschäftigung’.

Technology

During the last years, some core technologies have been developed which are either used by us in our services or can be used by our customers. Starting from the modelling and control of a single asset, ending with complete Analyzer systems and the holistic development suite VIAvento, all our technologies are already used successfully by our project partners.

Since the Avasition has been founded in 2010, we are working on power-electronic assets and necessary related design and project aspects like e.g. design, dimensioning and commissioning. In parallel to our project work, we have developed the powerful development software-suite VIAvento to optimize our offered services in terms of quality and feedback times. Based on the featured control-development software with the related realtime coders for C and VHDL, the EMT and RMS grid-calculation software and the post-processing possibilities, VIAvento is the backbone of most of our projects. Our customers like the fact that a software can be purchased with no additional third-party license costs which is a key factory in roll-out situations.

One application of VIAvento is the generation of compiled high-quality highly performant asset models which enable the analysis of power-electronic assets in equal quality in different grid-calculation programs. All models are real-time executable and can be integrated on several HIL platforms. Based on the same technology as the core of VIAvento, these calculation-time efficient plugins enable high-quality analysis – independent of the tools of your choice.

Ever since the inception of Avasition, the control technology is continuously improved. Due to the utilization of the control principles in different topologies and application, the control technologies are highly optimized in terms of robustness, optimal usage of the physical dimensioning and very fast dynamics, essentially especially in modern fault-ride through situations.

Beside our wide range of software-based offline analyses possibilities, we offer the Avasition Analyzer which enables the analysis of complex grid systems with hundreds of controlled power-electronic assets up to realtime based on cost-efficient hardware (FPGA based). In combination with the comfortable graphical user interface VIAvento, large-scale simulation and grid-calculation scenarios can be performed in attractive execution time. The Analyzer can also be used as HIL system which has been done in several projects.

Engineering services

Our services cover all relevant process and project steps in the scope of power-electronic assets. Starting with the basic design and dimensioning of the asset, we can support you identifying the optimal overall solution for your application. Besides the choice of the topology and the components, complete analyses of the grid integration and the utilization and stress of all components can be performed. As a result, costs, needed space and weight as well as engineering efforts can be optimized.

We can implement a customer-specific model of your asset for several grid calculation and simulation programs. With our speed-optimized models, you or your clients can analyse your asset with high quality and low effort. With an existing model, we can additionally support the design and the implementation of your control software. Based on our control technology, we can implement a robust and highly dynamic control in C code or VHDL code.

With an existing parameterization and control, we can support your quality management and your internal optimization notably with a software- and hardware-based validation of your control functions. In the validation, the control behaviour is analysed with software-in-the-loop or hardware-in-the-loop applications concerning the fulfilment of the basic-design requirements.

In our system and simulation studies, we analyse and assess the steady-state and dynamic behaviour of your asset, beginning with a single asset up to a complete grid system, like e.g. transmission grids or complete wind farms. We can assist you clarifying many questions concerning stability, holistic EMTC (electromagnetic compatibility, e.g. harmonics and subharmonics, SSTI), compatibility and grid-code implementation and, therefore, reduce your risks.

Furthermore, we can support you with a general software development where e.g. the complete illustrated process is implemented in a software-guided process.

Beside the parameterization and the analyses, we also offer the complete realization of demonstrators and prototypes. Here, different voltage and power levels can be combined with different topologies. Benefit from our possibilities and let us build your prototype up to the megawatt range in very short time.

Project partners

Our project partners are very divers but share the common interest in power-electronic converters, their control and grid-integration issues.

Converter manufacturers

One core aspect of our projects is often the detailed modelling and control of power-electronic converters. Since the very beginning of Avasition, we have had various projects in this scope with converter manufactures dealing with different voltage levels (converters for low-, medium- and high voltage in public and industrial grids as well as railway systems).

Asset manufacturers and operators

Another important customer group subsumes the manufactures and operators of assets – like e.g. wind-power-plant and locomotive manufacturers – which often buy converter equipment from external suppliers. For this group, often the analysis and assessment of the dynamic converter-control behaviour, the influence of the converters on surrounding components and the thermal stress and the aging of the semiconductors in steady-state and dynamic operation are project issues (e.g. asset behaviour and component stress in LVRT and HVRT situations).

Grid-system operators

In cooperation with grid-system operators (TSO and DSO), we often analyse the influence of controlled converter assets on different grid-stability aspects. The main foci are grid integration of renewable energies (e.g. wind and solar) and DC-transmission systems (HVDC and MVDC applications in MMC and other multilevel converter topologies) and asset-related specifications.

Universities and research institutes

We permanently want to improve and develop ourselves. Therefore, we cooperate with leading scientists. Amongst others, system studies, realization of expert opinions and development and realization of holistic laboratory demonstrators are performed jointly.