In a future electrical interconnected grid predominantly powered by renewable generators, offshore wind farms will need to take on the role of today's power plants as major producers. They must operate in a grid-forming or grid-supporting manner. This project focuses on the requirements for offshore wind farms connected to the interconnected grid via high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission, particularly in the short-term timeframe.

These requirements include the provision of instantaneous reserve (virtual inertia), voltage formation, and damping of subsynchronous and supersynchronous resonances. Additionally, the project will explore how an offshore wind farm can facilitate a black start of a part of the onshore interconnected grid. Moreover, methods enabling the offshore wind farm power plant to provide primary and secondary control power will be investigated. Different operational management strategies for the interaction between HVDC and the wind farm will be researched and compared.

Given the significant importance of offshore wind energy for the energy transition, the project will also examine whether offshore wind farm power plants can be interconnected at sea. The meshing of multiple offshore wind farms and offshore HVDC stations would enhance the availability of wind energy and thereby increase system security in the future power grids.

The sub-project at the University of Rostock will initially investigate the requirements for the voltage-impressing control of the onshore HVDC converter. This will involve utilizing the test grids developed by the TSO project partners and examining the impact of other renewable generators and loads on overall system behavior in an exemplary single-node network.

Subsequently, various generic control concepts for both HVDC converters and wind turbine converters will be researched. The system behavior achieved with these concepts will be compared to that achieved using currently available industrial controls.