Feasibility study of HVDC light: a case of Mafia Island electrification by national grid

Many islands distanced from the mainland use expensive small and uneconomical plants for power generation which are also environmentally unfriendly. Mafia Island is currently supplied by two diesel generators with a total capacity of 1050 which is not sufficiently capable to meet the energy demand of consumers in the island. The development of power semiconductors specifically IGBT’s and extruded DC cables led to possible connection of the grid network to such distanced load with small load demand. Electric load demand forecasting using long term method of the trend analysis was applied for load demand forecasting for 25 years. The power expected in the year 2037 is 18 MW. Voltage Source Converter based HVDC employing IGBT’s that operates with high frequency Pulse Width Modulation and d-q control technique is presented in this research work. Modelling and simulation results of HVDC Light system using MATLAB/Simulink were presented. The simulation results included when the system was at normal operation condition, under single phase to ground fault and three phases to ground fault. In the three cases the simulation results have shown that HVDC Light system performance was capable of delivering reliable and quality power to distanced load such as Mafia Island from the National Grid. Many islands distanced from the mainland use expensive small and uneconomical plants for power generation which are also environmentally unfriendly. Mafia Island is currently supplied by two diesel generators with a total capacity of 1050 which is not sufficiently capable to meet the energy demand of consumers in the island. The development of power semiconductors specifically IGBT’s and extruded DC cables led to possible connection of the grid network to such distanced load with small load demand. Electric load demand forecasting using long term method of the trend analysis was applied for load demand forecasting for 25 years. The power expected in the year 2037 is 18 MW. Voltage Source Converter based HVDC employing IGBT’s that operates with high frequency Pulse Width Modulation and d-q control technique is presented in this research work. Modelling and simulation results of HVDC Light system using MATLAB/Simulink were presented. The simulation results included when the system was at normal operation condition, under single phase to ground fault and three phases to ground fault. In the three cases the simulation results have shown that HVDC Light system performance was capable of delivering reliable and quality power to distanced load such as Mafia Island from the National Grid.