• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.195-203
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• 2018

In the variable speed Wind Turbine based on ElectroMagnetic Coupler (WT-EMC), a synchronous generator is coupled directly to the grid. Therefore, like conventional power plants, WT-EMC is able to inherently support grid frequency. However, due to the reduced inertia of the synchronous generator, WT-EMC is expected to be controlled to increase its output power in response to a grid frequency drop to support grid frequency. Similar to the grid frequency support control of Type 3 or Type 4 wind turbine, inertial control and droop control can be used to calculate the WT-EMC additional output power reference according to the synchronous generator speed. In this paper, an experimental platform is built to study the grid frequency support from WT-EMC with inertial control and droop control. Two synchronous generators, driven by two induction motors controlled by two converters, are used to emulate the synchronous generators in conventional power plants and in WT-EMCs respectively. The effectiveness of the grid frequency support from WT-EMC with inertial control and droop control responding to a grid frequency drop is validated by experimental results. The selection of the grid frequency support controller and its gain for WT-EMC is analyzed briefly.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.61 no.8
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• pp.1099-1106
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• 2012

Microgrid is a new electrical energy system that composed of various generators, renewable energy, batteries and loads located near the electrical customers. When Microgrid is interconnected with large power system, Microgrid don't need to control the frequency. But in case of the outage or faults of power system, Microgrid should control the frequency to prevent the shutdown of Microgrid. This paper presents the frequency control methods using the droop function, being used by synchronous generators and EMS(Energy Management System). Using droop function, two battery systems could share the load based on locally measured signals without any communications between batteries. Also, we suggest that EMS should control the controllable distributed generators as P/Q control modes except batteries to overcome the weakness of droop function. Finally we suggest the two batteries systems to prolong the battery's life time considering the economical view. The validation of proposed methods is tested using PSCAD/EMTDC simulations and field test sites at the same time.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.1105-1118
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• 2015

Battery energy storage devices (ESDs) have become more and more commonplace to maintain the stability of islanded power systems. Considering the limitation in inverter capacity and the requirement of flexibility in the ESD, the droop control was implemented in paralleled ESDs for higher capacity and autonomous operation. Under the conventional droop control, state-of-charge (SoC) errors between paralleled ESDs is inevitable in the discharging operation. Thus, some ESDs cease operation earlier than expected. This paper proposes an adaptive accelerating parameter to improve the performance of the SoC error eliminating droop controller under the constraints of a microgrid. The SoC of a battery ESD is employed in the active power droop coefficient, which could eliminate the SoC error during the discharging process. In addition, to expedite the process of SoC error elimination, an adaptive accelerating parameter is dedicated to weaken the adverse effect of the constraints due to the requirement of the system running. Moreover, the stability and feasibility of the proposed control strategy are confirmed by small-signal analysis. The effectiveness of the control scheme is validated by simulation and experiment results.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.731-747
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• 2016

The droop-based control strategy is widely applied in the interfacing inverters for distributed generation. This can be a problem since low-frequency stability issues may be encountered in droop-based microgrid. The objective of this paper is to classify, evaluate and compare various low-frequency damping methods. First, low-frequency stability problems are analyzed and an equivalent model of a droop-controlled inverter is investigated to classify the damping methods into the source-type damping strategies and the impedance-type damping strategies. Moreover, the lead-lag compensation network insertion control is proposed as a beneficial part of the source-type damping strategies. Then, the advantages and disadvantages of the different types of damping methods are theoretically evaluated and experimentally tested. Furthermore, the damping methods are comprehensively compared to illustrate the application field of each method. Finally, the synthesis of different damping methods to enhance the low-frequency stability is discussed and experimental validation is presented.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers B
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• v.53 no.4
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• pp.255-261
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• 2004

This paper presents an improved droop method which minimizes the voltage droop of a parallel-connected power supply Conventionally, the droop method has been used to achieve a simple structure and no-interconnections among power sources. However, it has a trade-off between output voltage regulation and load sharing accuracy In this paper, the droop is minimized with a current and droop gain control using steady-stage estimation. The proposed method can achieve both good voltage regulation and good load sharing. A design example of two 10㎸, 100㎃ parallel modules is made and tested to verify the proposed current-sharing method.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.329-339
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• 2016

Owing to mismatched feeder impedances in an islanded microgrid, the conventional droop control method typically results in errors in reactive power sharing among distributed generation (DG) units. In this study, an improved droop control strategy based on secondary voltage control is proposed to enhance the reactive power sharing accuracy in an islanded microgrid. In a DG local controller, an integral term is introduced into the voltage droop function, in which the voltage compensation signal from the secondary voltage control is utilized as the common reactive power reference for each DG unit. Therefore, accurate reactive power sharing can be realized without any power information exchange among DG units or between DG units and the central controller. Meanwhile, the voltage deviation in the microgrid common bus is removed. Communication in the proposed strategy is simple to implement because the information of the voltage compensation signal is broadcasted from the central controller to each DG unit. The reactive power sharing accuracy is also not sensitive to time-delay mismatch in the communication channels. Simulation and experimental results are provided to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.1245-1254
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• 2018

The stability of a grid-connected system (GCS) has become a critical issue with the increasing utilization of renewable energy sources. Under grid faults, however, a grid-connected inverter cannot work efficiently by using only the traditional droop control. In addition, the unbalance factor of voltage/current at the common coupling point (PCC) may increase significantly. To ensure the stable operation of a GCS under grid faults, the capability to compensate for grid imbalance should be integrated. To solve the aforementioned problem, an improved voltage-type grid-connected control strategy is proposed in this study. A negative sequence conductance compensation loop based on a positive sequence power droop control is added to maintain PCC voltage balance and reduce grid current imbalance, thereby meeting PCC power quality requirements. Moreover, a stable analysis is presented based on the small signal model. Simulation and experimental results verify the aforementioned expectations, and consequently, the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.1152-1162
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• 2016

The unequal impedances of the interconnecting cables between paralleled inverters in the island mode of microgrids cause inaccurate reactive power sharing when the traditional droop control is used. Many studies in the literature adopt low speed communications between the inverters and the central control unit to overcome this problem. However, the losses of this communication link can be very detrimental to the performance of the controller. This paper proposes an improved reactive power-sharing control method. It employs infrequent measurements of the voltage at the point of common coupling (PCC) to estimate the output impedance between the inverters and the PCC and then readjust the voltage droop controller gains accordingly. The controller then reverts to being a traditional droop controller using the newly calculated gains. This increases the immunity of the controller against any losses in the communication links between the central control unit and the inverters. The capability of the proposed control method has been demonstrated by simulation and experimental results using a laboratory scale microgrid.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.701-711
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• 2013

This paper takes into account the influence of the different impedances of distribution lines on power distribution among inverters when the inverters are paralleled with the droop control method. The impact of distribution lines on the power distribution of inverters can be divided into two aspects. Firstly, since the distributed generators are in low voltage grids, there is resistive impedance in the distribution lines, which will cause control coupling and reduce system stability. The virtual negative resistive impedance of inverters is adopted in this paper to neutralize the resistive element of distribution lines and thus make the distribution line impedance purely inductive. Secondly, after solving the resistive impedance problem, the difference in the inductive impedance value of distribution lines due to the low density of distributed generators will cause an unequal share of reactive power. With regards to this problem, modification is put forward for the droop control strategy to share the reactive power equally. The feasibility of the design is validated by simulation and experimental results.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.1020-1033
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• 2019

This paper presents a control strategy to enhance the accuracy of reactive power sharing between paralleled three-phase inverters in an islanded microgrid. In this study, the mismatch of power sharing when the line impedances have significant differences between inverters connected to a microgrid has been solved, the accuracy of the reactive power sharing in an islanded microgrid is increased, the voltage droop slope is tuned to compensate for the mismatch of voltage drops across the line impedances by using an enhanced droop controller. The proposed method ensures accurate power sharing even if the microgrid has local loads at the output of the inverters. The control model has been simulated by MATLAB/Simulink with two or three inverters connected in parallel. Simulation results demonstrate the accuracy of the implemented control method. Furthermore, in order to validate the theoretical analysis and simulation results, an experimental setup was built in the laboratory. Results obtained from the experimental setup verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.