Design considerations in development of Active Mobile Substations

While conventional mobile substations are used to bypass the whole substation in case of loss or maintenance of power transformers, Active Mobile Substations (AMS) can be used in normal conditions as a power router and contingencies as a recovery transformer. The AMS is a mobile substation with integrated power electronics and by controlling its throughput power can be connected across different transformers of the grid. The AMS is expected to be at least 20MVA with 230kV and 69kV outputs. This paper proposes transmission-level active mobile substations that provide back-up in case of power transformer failure or forced reduced operation scenarios in addition to power flow control for seasonal renewable energy transmission. These functions altogether have been aggregated not only because of the technical merits but also to address the economic concerns regarding the cost of the power electronics for transmission applications. In this paper, design considerations in development of the AMS will be provided in terms of power electronics building blocks, converter system control and its effects, and required supervisory control. Throughout the paper, theoretical analyses and relevant results are presented.