Comparative economic analysis of low frequency AC transmission system for the integration of large offshore wind farms

Abstract To fully extract the potential of offshore wind power, the wind farms are built further from mainland and the capacity is growing larger. Low Frequency AC (LFAC) transmission System is a promising solution to the integration of large offshore wind farms in long distance. This paper conducts a comparative economic analysis of LFAC. Compared to 50 Hz High Voltage AC (HVAC) transmission, LFAC can reduce charging current in AC cables to enhance the transmission ability in long distance. Compared to High Voltage DC (HVDC) transmission, LFAC eliminates the large expense of offshore converter station. In addition, the topologies of AC/AC converter in LFAC also influences the economic performance significantly. By designing typical AC/AC converters based on modular multilevel technique in a unified way, this paper performs a full-scale economic comparison in different voltage level, active power and reactive power cases. Furthermore, the economic comparison based on capital cost of HVAC, HVDC and LFAC is comprehensively studied considering different transmission capacity and the AC/AC converter topologies. The economic range of HVAC, LFAC and HVDC application is obtained, and results show that LFAC is suitable for medium distance circumstances (around 80–200 km). The economic range of LFAC expands when power rating increases.