Comparative evaluation of power loss in HVAC and HVDC transmission systems

Researches on renewable energy sources have been carried out and ways to reduce energy consumption and energy wastage have been discussed and studied to tackle the world's power shortage problems. Wind farm, one of the prominent renewable sources, is usually remotely far from onshore and needs long transmission to bring generated power to populated areas. This paper covers the analysis of the traditional high voltage alternating current (HVAC) transmission system and comparison of the aforementioned system with high voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission in terms of power loss. In this paper, the converter that used in HVDC transmission system is voltage source converter (VSC). To observe and evaluate the power losses, the HVAC and HVDC transmission models are simulated in PSCAD. It is seen that cable contributes to large portion of losses in HVAC system, increasingly so with longer transmission distance. Whereas for HVDC system, converter loss is found to outweigh cable loss.