Planning a HVDC South American Pacific Electric Interconnection Based on MTDC

Abstract

The continuous development of DC technology and its increasing implementation in projects, mainly in Europe, North America, and Asia, have created the need for methodologies to plan the DC interconnections between countries. However, the planning process should not be developed in a local context but rather, in the long run, thus enabling the inclusion of regional electrical systems. This paper presents two main methodologies. The first one aims to design local Multi-Terminal DC grids (MTDC) at the national level, using the graph theory. The second methodology presented is the integration of local MTDC grids that can later be extended to regional, continental, or subcontinental grids. The methodology is applied in the planning of regional electrical integration of the Pacific basin countries.