An Owner's Perspective on the Implementation of Grid-Forming Controls for VSC HVDC and STATCOM Projects

Minnesota Power will implement a STATCOM project in north central Minnesota and a VSC

HVDC project with converter stations in North Dakota and northeastern Minnesota. Due to the rapidly changing conditions of the grid in Minnesota and the surrounding region, both projects will be implemented with GFM control schemes. This paper provides a brief summary of the rationale for utilizing GFM controls for each project, engagement undertaken with suppliers to understand their perspectives and GFM offerings, challenges and opportunities in the development of technical specification and performance requirements for the GFM control schemes, and experiences with the design-phase implementation of the GFM control scheme as it has progressed for each project as of the date of this paper. Experiences with each project are compared and contrasted, including discussion of the process for aligning the specification performance requirements with the supplier’s offering, and the impact on the approach to dynamic performance studies for each project. Based on experiences from the two projects, observations and recommendations are provided regarding the need for standardization of practical technical specification requirements, meaningful and measurable performance metrics, and dynamic performance study methodologies for GFM systems.