• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.10 no.3
• /
• pp.1363-1369
• /
• 2015

The frequency of a power system should be maintained within the allowed limits for stable operation. When a disturbance such as generator tripping occurs in a power system, the frequency is recovered to the nominal value through the inertial, primary, and secondary responses of the operating synchronous generators (SGs). However, for a power system with high wind penetration, the system inertia will decrease significantly because wind generators (WGs) are operating decoupled from the power system. This paper proposes a dynamic droop-based inertial control for a WG. The proposed inertial control determines the dynamic droop depending on the rate of change of frequency (ROCOF). At the initial period of a disturbance, where the ROCOF is large, the droop is set to be small to release a large amount of the kinetic energy (KE) and thus the frequency nadir can be increased significantly. However, as times goes on, the ROCOF will decrease and thus the droop is set to be large to prevent over-deceleration of the rotor speed of a WG. The performance of the proposed inertial control was investigated in a model system, which includes a 200 MW wind power plant (WPP) and five SGs using an EMTP-RV simulator. The test results indicate that the proposed scheme improves the frequency nadir significantly by releasing a large amount of the KE during the initial period of a disturbance.

• Journal of Power Electronics
• /
• v.15 no.4
• /
• pp.1105-1118
• /
• 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
• /
• v.17 no.2
• /
• pp.551-560
• /
• 2017

The present study proposes an angle droop controller for converter interfaced (dispatchable) distributed generation (DG) resources in the islanded mode of operation. Due to the necessity of proper real and reactive power sharing between different types of resources in microgrids and the ability of systems to respond properly to abnormal conditions (sudden load changes, load uncertainty, load current disturbances, transient conditions, etc.), it is necessary to produce appropriate references for all of the mentioned above conditions. The proposed control strategy utilizes a current controller in addition to an angle droop controller in the discrete time domain to generate appropriate responses under transient conditions. Furthermore, to reduce the harmonics caused by switching at converters' output, a LCL filter is used. In addition, a comparison is done on the effects that LCL filters and L filters have on the performance of DG units. The performance of the proposed control strategy is demonstrated for multi islanded grids with various types of loads and conditions through simulation studies in the DigSilent Power Factory software environment.

• Journal of Power Electronics
• /
• v.18 no.4
• /
• pp.1245-1254
• /
• 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
• /
• v.17 no.1
• /
• pp.294-304
• /
• 2017

This paper proposes a point of common coupling (PCC) voltage compensation method for islanding microgrids using an improved power sharing control scheme among distributed generators (DGs) without communication. The PCC voltage compensation algorithm is implemented in the droop control scheme to reduce the PCC voltage deviation produced by the droop controller itself and the voltage drop on the line impedance. The control scheme of each individual DG unit is designed to use only locally measured feedback variables and an obtained line impedance to calculate the PCC voltage. Therefore, traditional voltage measurement devices installed at the PCC as well as communication between the PCC and the DGs are not required. The proposed control scheme can maintain the PCC voltage amplitude within an allowed range even to some extent assuming inaccurate line impedance parameters. In addition, it can achieve proper power sharing in islanding microgrids. Experimental results obtained under accurate and inaccurate line impedances are presented to show the performance of the proposed control scheme in islanding microgrids.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
• /
• v.61 no.11
• /
• pp.1584-1589
• /
• 2012

The grid-interconnected microgrid can be able to operate with and without the utility microgrid to supply electricity. when the microgrid operates in grid-connected mode, the frequency of the microgrid synchronizes with the system frequency. In this case, the frequency of the microgrid has small variation which is able to change the output of distributed generation with a droop controller. Thus, the small variation of frequency can make the distributed generation generate unnecessary electricity consistently. In this paper, we propose a frequency droop control with a dead band so as to prevent the distributed generations from generating unnecessary output while in grid-interconnected mode. In addition, a distributed generation can have a restoration control to restore the frequency changed by a droop control as a rated frequency. Also, we state the problem of restoration control with a dead band, and propose its solution when the microgrid operates in stand alone mode. We simulate the proposed droop control using PSCAD/EMTDC to verify the validity of the control.

• Journal of Power Electronics
• /
• v.13 no.4
• /
• pp.701-711
• /
• 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
• /
• v.16 no.3
• /
• pp.1152-1162
• /
• 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.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
• /
• v.61 no.8
• /
• pp.1099-1106
• /
• 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
• /
• v.16 no.1
• /
• pp.38-47
• /
• 2016

This paper presents DG based droop controlled parallel inverter systems with virtual impedance considering the unequal resistive-inductive combined line impedance condition. This causes a reactive power sharing error and dynamic performance degradation. Each of these drawbacks can be solved by adding the feedforward term of each line impedance voltage drop or injecting the virtual inductor. However, if the line impedances are high enough because of the long distance between the DG and the PCC or if the capacity of the system is large so that the output current is very large, this leads to a high virtual inductor voltage drop which causes reductions of the output voltage and power. Therefore, the line impedance voltage drops and the virtual inductor and resistor voltage drop compensation methods have been considered to solve these problems. The proposed method has been verified in comparison with the conventional droop method through PSIM simulation and low-scale experimental results.