Right now, the Spanish Electric System has a total of 28GW wind capacity and 14.7GW photovoltaic capacity. By 2030, the Spanish National Integrated Plan for Energy and Climate 2021-2030 (PNIEC) forecasts 120 GW of installed renewable power in Spain, of which 50 GW will be wind power and 38 GW solar PV, to achieve the goal of 74% renewable electricity production from the current 44%. Some of the actions to allow for the increased production, include the development of additional 3.6GW of pumping storage and 2.5GW of other storage (mainly Battery Energy Storage Systems – BESS). However, these developments might not be enough to ensure safe system operation in a 100% renewable system, as envisioned in the PNIEC for 2050.

Several enabling technologies have been identified to achieve robust operation with large renewable energy penetration and low inertia, namely:

• Advanced grid forming control of power converter interfaced storage, generation and transmission (HVDC),
• Protection of power electronic dominated systems,
• Demand flexibility management and
• Fast service restoration from renewable based generation.

Clearly, these technologies are directed to solve the challenges identified by PNIEC.

Therefore, the start hypothesis for this proposal is that advanced grid forming control and protection strategies for power converter interfaced storage, generation and transmission (HVDC), including large dispatchable load control and fast service restoration from renewable-based generation are key enabling technologies for the Spanish and European renewable energy targets leading to a 100% renewable energy system.

Therefore, the main objective of the project is contribute to de-risking the use of the considered enabling technologies for the control and operation of large scale electric systems with 100% renewable energy.

The specific objectives of the project are:

1. Deployment of grid forming capability for existing power plants in large scale electric systems.
2. Combined grid forming control of renewable power plants and HVDC links.
3. Design of robust control algorithms for resilient 100% renewable electric systems.
4. Intelligent protection algorithms for 100% power electronic based systems.
5. Development of intelligent and adaptive model-based distributed diagnosis tools for fault detection, identification and location.
6. Analysis of functional specifications for grid forming power plants.

Objectives 1,2 and 6 will be carried out within subproject 1 “Hybrid Grid-forming Power Plants and Energy Hubs”, lead by Universitat Politecnica de Valencia.

Objectives 3,4 and 5 will be carried out within subproject 2 “Decentralised Control and Protection for Resilient Converter-Based Future Power Systems”, and lead by Universitat Jaume I de Castelló.

Subproject 1 “Hybrid Grid-forming Power Plants and Energy Hubs” aims to address some of the challenges put forward for the reliable deployment and operation of 100% renewable large scale electric systems.

This subproject will study some of the identified issues, namely:

• Advanced grid forming control of power converter interfaced storage, generation and transmission (HVDC),
• Demand flexibility management and
• Fast service restoration from renewable based generation.

The specific project objectives will be as follows:

• Deployment of grid forming capability for existing power plants in large scale electric systems.
• Combined grid forming control of renewable power plants and HVDC links.
• Analysis of functional specifications for grid forming power plants.

The first objective will lead to reliable grid forming control of type-3 wind power plants, hybrid plants and increased penetration of large hydrolysers in 100% renewable energy systems.

The second objective will optimise the protection and overall operation of renewable energy sistems connected to HVDC grids.

The final objective will help all market players to define and validate adequate functional goals for grid forming converters (both for normal and black-star operation). This aspect is important to contribute to the fast deployment of grid forming functionality.

All the functionalities will be validated against very realistic scenarios, in order to increase the confidence level in the proposed technologies. The studied scenarios will include a 100% renewable Balearic Island system.