Coordinated Frequency Control through MTDC Transmission Systems∗∗This work was supported in part by the European Commission, the Swedish Research Council (VR) and the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation. We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions. Corresponding author: Martin Andreasson.

In this paper we propose a distributed dynamic controller for sharing frequency control reserves of asynchronous AC systems connected through a multi-terminal HVDC (MTDC) grid. We derive sufficient stability conditions, which guarantee that the frequencies of the AC systems converge to the nominal frequency. Simultaneously, the global quadratic cost of power generation is minimized, resulting in an optimal distribution of generation control reserves. The proposed controller also regulates the voltages of the MTDC grid, asymptotically minimizing a quadratic cost function of the deviations from the nominal voltages. The proposed controller is tested on a high-order dynamic model of a power system consisting of asynchronous AC grids, modelled as IEEE 14 bus networks, connected through a six-terminal HVDC grid. The performance of the controller is successfully evaluated through simulation.