Speaker: Nilanjan Ray Chaudhuri, Penn State University
Title: TBA
Abstract: It is envisaged that Multiterminal DC (MTDC) grid will be a key cornerstone of the sustainable future of our planet. MTDC grids are planned in and around Europe to integrate significant amount of offshore wind energy and onshore solar energy to the Pan-European AC grid and two pilot MTDC projects are already operational in China. In this talk, the speaker will lay out some of the key challenges facing DC grid systems and focus on the frequency support issue among AC grids interconnected by the DC network. These AC grids are ‘asynchronous’ in nature, and as a result, they do not have a natural way of exchanging frequency support. Since in each AC area the inertia is progressively reducing due to replacement of conventional generation by inverter-interfaced renewables, they are experiencing deeper frequency nadir and higher rate-of-change-of-frequency following a generation loss, which can lead to underfrequency load shedding issues among others. This talk will briefly touch upon modeling of such AC-MTDC systems and then the speaker will delve deeper into the control challenges of such grids in providing exchange of frequency support in a controlled manner. The speaker will demonstrate the viability of a new ratio-based inertial and primary frequency support framework that has the promise for a new market mechanism in future.
Bio: N
ilanjan Ray Chaudhuri received his Ph.D. degree from Imperial College London, London, UK in 2011 in Power Systems. From 2005-2007, he worked in General Electric (GE) John F. Welch Technology Center. He came back to GE and worked in GE Global Research Center, NY, USA as a Lead Engineer during 2011-2014. Presently, he is an Assistant Professor with the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Penn State, University Park, PA. He was an Assistant Professor with North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND, USA during 2014-2016. He is a member of the IEEE and IEEE PES. Dr. Ray Chaudhuri is the lead author of the book Multi-terminal Direct Current Grids: Modeling, Analysis, and Control (Wiley/IEEE Press, 2014), and served as an Associate Editor of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY (2013 – 2019) and IEEE PES LETTERS (2016 – present). Dr. Ray Chaudhuri was the recipient of the National Science Foundation Early Faculty CAREER Award in 2016 and Joel and Ruth Spira Excellence in Teaching Award in 2019.