A Smart Grid Simulation Centre at the Institute for Energy and Transport - Model validation of VSC- MTDC for integration of offshore wind energy Stavros Lazarou 1 *, Rodrigo Teixeira Pinto 2 , Edwin Wiggelinkhuizen 3 , Philip Minnebo 1 , Heinz Wilkening 1 , Jan Pierik 3 , Pavol Bauer 2 , Gianluca Fulli 1 Invited Paper for the Panel Session: “RT and HIL Simulation Applications for Approaching Complexity in Future Power & Energy Systems”, 2012 IEEE Workshop on Complexity in Engineering, June 11-13, 2012. Aachen, Germany. 1 European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Institute for Energy and Transport P.O. Box 2, 1755 ZG Petten - The Netherlands 2 TU Delft Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science, Electrical Power Processing P.O. Box 5031, 2600 GA Delft - The Netherlands 3 ECN, Wind Energy Systems P.O. Box 1, 1755 ZG Petten - The Netherlands * Corresponding author: stavros.lazarou@ec.europa.eu , +31 224 565096 Abstract— In this paper the Smart Grid simulation centre facilities of the Institute for Energy and Transport (IET), Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission's (EC) are presented, providing a specific application of our work. The Smart Grid Simulation Centre is intended to combine electrical power components and communication/control equipment with system simulation tools. In this way the Centre can test grid elements and evaluate different operation scenarios under various conditions. As a specific activity the cooperation in accessing multiterminal grids is described in this paper. Keywords-component; smart grids; interoperability; security of supply; modelling; real-time simulation I. INTRODUCTION In order Europe to achieve the de-carbonization of the society and the security of energy supply targets, the contribution of renewable energy sources is of paramount importance. The exploitable offshore wind potential could contribute in this direction. According to the estimations wind farms with a total capacity of 40GW will be installed in Europe by the end of this decade [1]. With the increasing size of the wind parks and the increased distances to shore, HVDC transmission systems will often prevail over HVAC systems. From a certain point HVDC systems are not only more economical compared to HVAC, but also provide more capabilities to control the power flow and to support the AC voltage, both onshore and inside the wind farms. By creating Multi-Terminal DC (MTDC) grids, rather than only point-to- point connections, energy trading can be realized as well as a more efficient usage of the grid. Consequently researchers’ interests move towards multi-terminal high voltage DC (HVDC) networks to support different technical problems such as: - offshore generation (wind, wave and tidal); - sea or long crossings; - coupling asynchronous grids; - reinforcement of /feed-in into weak grids; - grid reinforcement (e.g. pan-European overlay grid); - feeding of densely populated urban areas - isolated loads (e.g. offshore rigs, islands) Multi-terminal grids have been firstly proposed in 1963 [2] but J. Reeve 17 years later contributed in reviewing the bibliography [3]. The current technology offers two main schemes to develop HVDC multi-terminal grids. The Line- Commuted Converter (LCC-HVDC), which is based on the use of thyristors and the Voltage-Source Converter (VSC-HVDC), which is based on the use of force commutated switches, such as Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistors (IGBT). Especially for the wind park connection there is a tendency to consider the use of the voltage-source converters (VSC) technology [4], [5] which offers some specific advantages [6]: - VSC-HVDC can offer ancillary services providing reactive power; - It does not increase the short circuit current of the AC system; Another disadvantage is the sensitivity for DC faults A third disadvantage is the higher losses when compared to LCC-CSC.