Design, Implementation, and Application Guidelines of Master Power Plant Controllers in Dynamic Analysis for Grid Code Requirements

This paper presents the design, implementation, and application guidelines for several Master Power Plant Controllers (MPPCs) that have been used in project specific locations across parts of North America and Australia. The MPPCs described here provide advanced grid functions for hybrid power plants and wind farms that have a mix of different OEM technologies and associated control strategies. Over the course of this paper, advanced grid functionalities of the MPPCs that are site specific and uncommon are described. As dynamic models for the MPPCs were not available for simulation studies, the authors developed user defined models (UDMs) in commercial RMS and EMT software tools like PSS/E and PSCAD; which were then configured and tuned to study the impact of site-specific functionalities. The studies showed that the MPPCs can replicate the behavior of the actual equipment and when tuned and parameterized to site specific settings are capable of meeting the grid code requirements. The projects described in the paper have been tested and verified to meet interconnection requirements for several ISOs including ERCOT, HECO, LUMA Energy (formerly PREPA) and AEMO. The MPPCs models have been deemed appropriate by the respective ISOs/RTOs/TSPs for dynamic simulations that are routinely performed for evaluating system impact and transmission planning studies. For each of the projects described, the authors have had extensive discussions with MPPC OEMs confirming the dynamic performance of the onsite equipment to the study results. Simulation results presented in the paper depict the effectiveness of such MPPCs with more proliferation of converter-based resources in the grid.