Project: Development of tools for the analysis of the stability of offshore AC grids and grids rich in power electronic converters at Universitat Politècnica De Catalunya (23 May 2018 – 22 May 2021).
Watch his work package 2 short video and read the work package reports.
Journal publications:
Stability Assessment for Multi-Infeed Grid-Connected VSCs Modeled in the Admittance Matrix Form, IEEE Transactions on Circuits & Systems, July 2021.
Conference presentations and posters:
Wind Energy Science Conference, Cork, June 2019.
CIGRE Aalborg, June 2019.
HVDC Colloquium, UPC, Barcelona, Sept 2018.
PowerPoint video presentations:
Algorithms on characterising analytically resonance frequencies (15 mins) Aug 2020.
Policy related work:
European Energy Innovation InnoDC feature contributor, winter 2020.
Public work:
Virtual lecture to MSc students, Oct 2020.
Secondary school, Figueres, May 2018.
Secondments:
Toshiba, winter 2021.
Cardiff University, summer/autumn 2019.
Training:
PVTOOL: Operation Challenges in Large Scale PV Power Plants. (2020); KTH workshop: Emerging Topics in Control of Power Systems (2020); RTE: HVDC interaction studies with EMT simulation tools (2020); Catalan Level B2 (2019 onwards); ACDC international conference, Coventry (2019); National HVDC Centre, Scotland: RTDS Real-Time Simulation (2019); BIN@Porto (2018); KU Leuven: HVDC Technology and HVDC Grids (EES-UETP) (2018). Network meetings: KU Leuven (2021), Cinergia & UPC (2020); Cardiff University (2020), Elia (2019), DTU (2019), Uporto & Efacec (2018) and UPC (2018).
Background:
I am an Electromechanical Engineer from Bolivia. I have more than 4 years’ experience in developing high voltage electricity projects and analysing the Bolivian and neighbouring countries’ power systems at the largest stakeholder in generation, transmission and distribution in the Bolivian electricity sector.
I obtained my MSc in Electrical Energy Systems at Cardiff University, which proved to be my biggest academic challenge at that time. It was the first time I had moved abroad to pursue a higher education degree in a language other than my mother tongue. While I was there, my research project supervisor suggested I publish a paper on my dissertation topic. It led to my presenting my work ‘Fast Frequency Support Control in the GB Power System using VSC-HVDC Technology’ at the 7th IEEE PES Innovative Smart Grid Technologies European conference in Turin, Italy in 2017.
During my work development, I understood the high penetration of HVDC technologies into AC power systems, mostly to connect large off-shore wind farms. This has an impact over the system stability by decoupling the inertia stored in the rotating mass of generators. This effect was something I achieved to mitigate in my work by designing a frequency support control scheme over the HVDC-VSC converters.
The opportunity presented as an Early State Researcher is very exciting and challenging. By being trained in specialised software, I have simulated, averaged and switched HVDC-VSC models in MATLAB and PSCAD and validated them in an experimental test rig. I believe that I can contribute to InnoDC both with my academic and professional experience. Moreover, I am very enthusiastic about developing my knowledge and new skills.
There is plenty of research still to be done, such as the one I would like to undertake. I believe the future of HVDC technologies is promising and a key enabler towards renewable energy integration.