Direct Current (DC) grids are considered an attractive option for integrating high shares of renewable energy sources in the electrical distribution grid. Hence, in the future, Alternating Current (AC) and DC systems could be interconnected to form hybrid AC-DC distribution grids. This paper presents a two-step state estimation formulation for the monitoring of hybrid AC-DC grids. In the first step, state estimation is executed independently for the AC and DC areas of the distribution system. The second step refines the estimation results by exchanging boundary quantities at the AC-DC converters. To this purpose, the modulation index and phase angle control of the AC-DC converters are integrated into the second step of the proposed state estimation formulation. This allows providing additional inputs to the state estimation algorithm, which eventually leads to improve the accuracy of the state estimation results. Simulations on a sample AC-DC distribution grid are performed to highlight the benefits resulting from the integration of these converter control parameters for the estimation of both the AC and DC grid quantities.
Comparison of Grounding Modes of MMC-Based Flexible DC Distribution System