A Novel VSG-Based Accurate Voltage Control and Reactive Power Sharing Method for Islanded Microgrids

Bowen Zhou, Lei Meng, Dongsheng Yang, Zhanchao Ma and Guoyi Xu
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Bowen Zhou: College of Information Science and Engineering, Northeastern University, Shenyang 110819, China
Lei Meng: Department of Electrical Engineering, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China
Dongsheng Yang: College of Information Science and Engineering, Northeastern University, Shenyang 110819, China
Zhanchao Ma: College of Information Science and Engineering, Northeastern University, Shenyang 110819, China
Guoyi Xu: The State Key Laboratory of Alternate Electrical Power System with Renewable Energy Sources, North China Electric Power University, Beijing 102206, China

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 23, 1-23

Abstract: Islanded microgrids (IMGs) are more likely to be perturbed by renewable generation and load demand fluctuation, thus leading to system instability. The virtual synchronous generator (VSG) control has become a promising method in the microgrids stability control area for its inertia-support capability. However, the improper power sharing and inaccurate voltage control problems of the distributed generations (DGs) in microgrids still has not been solved with a unified method. This paper proposes a novel VSG equivalent control method named Imitation Excitation Control (IEC). In this method, a multi-objective control strategy for voltage and reactive power in a low voltage grid that considers a non-negligible resistance to reactance ratio (R/X) is proposed. With the IEC method, the voltage drop across feeders is compensated, thus the terminal voltage of each inverter will be regulated, which will effectively stabilize the PCC (point of common coupling) voltage and inhibit the circular current. Meanwhile, this method can realize accurate reactive power tracking the reference value, making it accessible for reactive power scheduling. What is more, the reasonability of the IEC model, namely the equivalent mechanical characteristic and transient process inertia support between VSGs and conventional synchronous generators (SG), is illustrated in this paper. Moreover, steady-state stability is proved by the small-signal modeling method, and the energy required by inertia support is given. Finally, the simulation result validates the effectiveness of the proposed method, and it is also demonstrated that the proposed method outperforms the conventional droop control method.

Keywords: VSG; power sharing; inertia support; energy support; small signal stability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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