Beijing, China, November 5, 2015—The converter valve of Hubian converter station, the receiving end of Xiamen Island Infeed VSC-HVDC Project, was successfully energized on November 3, which signifies the system commissioning has entered into a critical point of converter capability verification.

As the designer and developer of the MMC converter valve and Valve Base Controller (VBC), SGRI (State Grid Smart Grid Research Institute) is providing complete technical support for the installation and commissioning. With comprehensive and full preparations, all work is progressing smoothly. So far, we have completed a series of tests, including converter valve AC charging test and no-load deblock test, etc., which paved the way to final completion of system commissioning.

As the world’s first bipolar VSC-HVDC project, Xiamen Project is rated at ±320kV with a capacity of 1000MW. The whole project consists of two converter stations respectively located at Hubian and Pengcuo. According to the project schedule, the whole system is expected to become operational this December.

Xiamen is a major city situated along the southeastern coast of China. As the main part of the City, Xiamen Island accommodates a lot of important loads which impose high requirements on power quality and reliability. The building of Xiamen Project is equivalent to a 1000MW pollution-free power plant, which can meet the power demand of the Island for the next decade.