National Grid energizes UK substation with grid technology
UK: GE Renewable Energy’s Grid Solutions has energized the Bolney substation —the first of three substations to be part of the largest STATCOM scheme in Europe, owned by UK utility National Grid.
UK: GE Renewable Energy’s Grid Solutions has energized the Bolney substation —the first of three substations to be part of the largest STATCOM scheme in Europe, owned by UK utility National Grid.
The Bolney substation supports the large population and load centers south of London, as well as high-voltage direct current (HVDC) interconnectors with Europe.
In 2016, GE’s Grid Solutions was awarded a contract by National Grid to supply its latest utility-grade static synchronous compensator (STATCOM) solution along the transmission grid at the Bolney, Ninfield, and Richborough substations in southeast UK. The dynamic reactive compensator (DRC) solution in commercial operation at the Bolney substation since May 2019 uses a Modular Multilevel Converter (MMC) STATCOM and thyristor switched capacitor (TSC) technology to provide reactive power compensation along with a High Voltage Mechanically Switched Capacitor Dynamic Network (MSCDN). This is a first-of-its-kind voltage compensation scheme that will help National Grid provide a reliable electricity supply to its customers, even when network faults occur.
With STATCOM technology in place, the Bolney 400 kV substation is now supporting National Grid’s alternating current (AC) network and enhancing regional voltage stability for the UK-Belgium HVDC interconnection, which will deliver more than 1 GW of bi-directional power between the two countries. With less than 90 millisecond response time, the technology delivers dynamic reactive power range from -100 Mvar inductive (absorbing vars) to +225 Mvar capacitive (injecting vars) with availability of 98 % as per customer requirement.
This latest generation STATCOM solution is a Voltage Source Converter (VSC) technology based on Modular Multilevel Converter (MMC) architecture leveraged from GE’s robust power electronics experience. This design provides more stable output power generation than other competitive solutions, helping customer grids handle faults and fault recovery that is within the industry’s best performance. This design, combined with GE’s Advanced Digital Control system and experience from more than 400 shunt connected FACTS solutions, offers customers a digitally enabled solution.
Source: T&D World