Ph.D. Candidate Arjen van der Meer will defend his Ph.D. research on September 12 with his thesis Offshore VSC-HVDC networks - Impact on Transient Stability of AC Transmission Systems. Arjen was supervised by Professor van der Meijden, Professor Ferreira, and Dr. Gibescu (Electrical Sustainable Energy)
Arjen: “If we want to make efficient use of large offshore wind parks in the future, it is at technically attractive to switch from AC to DC. For a small device like a coffeemaker that is relatively easy. On a larger scale, when high voltage is involved, it is more complicated. The research question we asked ourselves in the beginning was: how can we integrate wind into the network using high voltage DC, thereby focusing on so-called transient stability.
We soon stumbled upon a lack of simulation models. So basically from the beginning I started my research into simulation models and creating better ones. I looked into different techniques, and ‘gluing’ different simulators together seemed most interesting. At the end we actually conducted detailed case studies using the improved simulation techniques as well, to be able to give a first indicative answer to the initial research question. When there is a lot of wind, the power system behaves a more nervously, and its transition to a stable state after disturbances is less straightforward. What I liked about my research is that I had to dive into a lot of publications from the 1970s. Stuff that has been written in the time that my parents were still young. It is funny to read now about that one should use numerical computers for simulations. I had to brush up a lot of outdated information, so that it can be used for current and future research. Research that I hope to do here at the faculty. First as a post-doc, but perhaps one day as an assistant professor”
