External Inertia Emulation Controller for Grid-Following Power Converter

The advent of renewable energy has posed difficulties in the operation of power systems whose net inertia is becoming critically low. To face such challenges, grid-forming power has been one of the potential solutions pursued by the industry and research community. Although promising, grid-forming p...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on industry applications 2021-11, Vol.57 (6), p.6568-6576
Main Authors: Lai, Ngoc-Bao, Tarraso, Andres, Baltas, Gregory N., Marin Arevalo, Leonardo V., Rodriguez, Pedro
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Communication
Control stability
Control systems design
Controllers
Emulation
Frequency conversion
Frequency support
grid-following power converter
Hardware-in-the-loop simulation
Inertia
inertia emulation
Load modeling
low-inertia systems
networked control
Phase locked loops
Power converters
Power system stability
Renewable energy sources
Servomotors
Stability analysis
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Summary:The advent of renewable energy has posed difficulties in the operation of power systems whose net inertia is becoming critically low. To face such challenges, grid-forming power has been one of the potential solutions pursued by the industry and research community. Although promising, grid-forming power converters are still immature for mass deployment in power systems. In the meanwhile, an enormous amount of grid-following power converters has been underexploited when it comes to grid-supporting functionalities. Therefore, this article proposes an external inertia emulation controller (eIEC) for grid-following power converter to provide frequency support to the grid. For the purpose of minimizing installation efforts and resources, the controller is designed in such a way that it can be implemented in an external controller communicating with the grid-following power converter via an industrial communication link. This article also investigates the effect of communication delay on the stability performance of the proposed controller. In addition to the detailed analysis, hardware-in-the-loop experiments are also carried out to validate the proposed eIEC.
ISSN:0093-9994
1939-9367
DOI:10.1109/TIA.2021.3108350