Virtual inertia extraction from a DC bus capacitor in a three−phase DC/AC inverter-based microgrid with seamless synchronisation operation modes

Abstract

It is crucial to employ power electronics converters for energy transfer in distributed energy resources such as photovoltaics, and wind energy system. Thus, parameters such as voltage, current, active and reactive powers, and frequency referred to the AC side need to be controlled. The local load could be operated either from converter itself or grid, hence the system could be called microgrid. In this paper, the active and reactive powers would be controlled separately when the inverter is connected to the grid. While in the islanded or autonomous mode, the proposed control would support the voltage and frequency. The proposed controller would be designed and function as the synchronous machine's voltage regulator and governor. The virtual synchronous machine is adopted to obtain the inertia and the concept is that the frequency of the grid is linked to the virtual frequency or so called the virtual speed of the rotor. The virtual frequency is obtained directly from the DC bus voltage of the inverter and this is achieved by allowing the DC link capacitor voltage to swing boarder than the grid frequency by making the capacitor voltage imitating frequency of grid. Where the frequency of grid is associated to the virtual frequency which is derived directly from DC capacitor voltage, thus, large level of inertia is extracted. The basic formulation, supervisory control, extraction the inertia from DC capacitor voltage, coordination transition, and evaluation the stability is presented in this paper. The mimic operation of the inverter as Synchronous Machine SM can make the distributed energy resources to be operated in either grid $-$ connected or islanded modes without the need to adopt control structure for the required mode. In addition, it provides robust performance in comparison with the traditional current, voltage and frequency control approaches. Moreover, the controller would be implemented for inverter having any type of filters and it is resilient to any variations in the filter and grid parameters. Furthermore, there is no concerning regarding instability problems, where it achieves the synchronisation smoothly and swiftly, and it is appropriate for implemented digitally.