and new perspectives Hassan Bevrani a,b,⇑, Toshifumi Ise b, Yushi Miura b a Dept. of Electrical and Computer Eng., University of Kurdistan, PO Box 416, Sanandaj, Iran b Dept. of Electrical, Electronic and Information Eng., Osaka University, Osaka, Japan a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 31 December 2012 Received in revised form 12 June 2013 Accepted 13 July 2013 Keywords: Virtual inertia Renewable energy VSG Frequency control Voltage control Microgrid a b s t r a c t In comparison of the conventional bulk power plants, in which the synchronous machines dominate, the distributed generator (DG) units have either very small or no rotating mass and damping property. With growing the penetration level of DGs, the impact of low inertia and damping effect on the grid stability and dynamic performance increases. A solution towards stability improvement of such a grid is to pro- vide virtual inertia by virtual synchronous generators (VSGs) that can be established by using short term energy storage together with a power inverter and a proper control mechanism. The present paper reviews the fundamentals and main concept of VSGs, and their role to support the power grid control. Then, a VSG-based frequency control scheme is addressed, and the paper is focused on the poetical role of VSGs in the grid frequency regulation task. The most important VSG topologies with a survey on the recent works/achievements are presented. Finally, the relevant key issues, main technical challenges, further research needs and new perspectives are emphasized. Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The capacity of installed inverter-based distributed generators (DGs) in power system is growing rapidly; and a high penetration level is targeted for the next two decades. For example only in Ja- pan, 14.3 GW photovoltaic (PV) electric energy is planned to be connected to the grid by 2020, and it will be increased to 53 GW by 2030. In European countries, USA, China, and India significant targets are also considered for using the DGs and renewable energy sources (RESs) in their power systems up to next two decades. Compared to the conventional bulk power plants, in which the synchronous machine dominate, the DG/RES units have either very small or no rotating mass (which is the main source of inertia) and damping property. The intrinsic kinetic energy (rotor inertia) and damping property (due to mechanical friction and electrical losses in stator, field and damper windings) of the bulk synchronous gen- erators play a significant role in the grid stability. With growing the penetration level of DGs/RESs, the impact of low inertia and damping effect on the grid dynamic performance and stability increases. Voltage rise due to reverse power from PV generations [1], excessive supply of electricity in the grid due to full generation by the DGs/RESs, power fluctuations due to var- iable nature of RESs, and degradation of frequency regulation (especially in the islanded microgrids [2], can be considered as some negative results of mentioned issue. A solution towards stabilizing such a grid is to provide addi- tional inertia, virtually. A virtual inertia can be established for DGs/RESs by using short term energy storage together with a power electronics inverter/converter and a proper control mecha- nism. This concept is known as virtual synchronous generator (VSG) [3] or virtual synchronous machine (VISMA) [4]. The units will then operate like a synchronous generator, exhibiting amount of inertia and damping properties of conventional synchronous ma- chines for short time intervals (in this work, the notation of ‘‘VSG’’ is used for the mentioned concept). As a result, the virtual inertia concept may provide a basis for maintaining a large share of DGs/RESs in future grids without compromising system stability. The present paper contains the following topics: first the funda- mentals and main concepts are introduced. Then, the role of VSGs in microgrids control is explained. In continuation, the most important VSG topologies with a review on the previous works and achievements are presented. The application areas for the VSGs, particularly in the grid frequency control, are mentioned. A frequency control scheme is addressed, and finally, the main tech- nical challenges and further research needs are addressed and the paper is concluded. 2. Fundamentals and concepts The idea of the VSG is initially based on reproducing the dynamic properties of a real synchronous generator (SG) for the power electronics-based DG/RES units, in order to inherit the advantages of a SG in stability enhancement. The principle of the VSG can be applied either to a single DG, or to a group of DGs. The first 0142-0615/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijepes.2013.07.009 ⇑ Corresponding author at: Dept. of Electrical and Computer Eng., University of Kurdistan, Sanandaj, PO Box 416, Iran. Tel.: +98 8716660073. E-mail address:
[email protected] (H. Bevrani). Electrical Power and Energy Systems 54 (2014) 244–254 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Electrical Power and Energy Systems journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijepes 1 Abstract- The method to investigate the interaction between a Virtual Synchronous Generator (VSG) and a power system is presented here. A VSG is a power-electronics based device that emulates the rotational inertia of synchronous generators. The development of such a device started in a pure simulation environment and extends to the practical realization of a VSG. Investigating the interaction between a VSG and a power system is a problem, as a power system cannot be manipulated without disturbing customers. By replacing the power system with a real time simulated one, this problem can be solved. The VSG then interacts with the simulated power system through a power interface. The advantages of such a laboratory test-setup are numerous and should prove beneficial to the further development of the VSG concept. I. INTRODUCTION Short term frequency stability in power systems is secured mainly by the large rotational inertia of synchronous machines which, due to its counteracting nature, smoothes out the various disturbances. The increasing growth of dispersed generation will cause the so-called inertia constant of the power system to decrease. This may result in the power system becoming instable [1]-[3]. A promising solution to such a development is the Virtual Synchronous Generator (VSG) [4]-[8], which replaces the lost inertia with virtual inertia. The VSG consists of three distinctive components, namely a power processor, an energy storage device and the appropriate control algorithm [4] as shown in Fig. 1. This system has been tested in a full Matlab/Simulink [21] simulation environment with promising results. Fig. 1. The VSG Concept. This work is a part of the VSYNC project funded by the European Commission under the FP6 framework with contract No:FP6 – 038584 (www.vsync.eu). To better study and witness the effects of virtual inertia, the hardware of a real VSG should be tested within a power system. Investigating the interaction between a real VSG and a power system is not easy as a power system cannot be manipulated without disturbing customers. Building a real power system for testing purposes would be too costly. By replacing the power system with a real time simulated one, this problem can be solved. In this paper the testing of a real hardware VSG in combination with a simulated power system is described. The power processor from Fig.1 is built from a Triphase® [9], [10] inverter system. The Matlab/simulink VSG algorithm is directly implemented on the inverter system through a dedicated FPGA interface developed by Triphase®. In order to test the hardware implemented VSG and to study its effects within a power system, it is connected with a real time digital simulator from RTDS® [17] through a power interface (Fig 2). Fig. 2. RTDS and Power Interface and VSG in a closed loop. The RTDS® simulates power systems in real time and is often used in closed loop testing with real external hardware. Keeping in mind that the ADCs and DACs, which are the inputs and outputs of the RTDS, have a dynamic range of ±10V max rated at 5mA max and the Triphase® inverter system is rated at 16kVA, it is clear that a power interface has to come in between to make this union possible as it is shown in Fig. 2. The main function of the power interface is to replicate the voltage waveform of a bus in a network model to a level of 400VLL at terminal 1 in Fig. 2. This terminal is loaded by the VSG and the current flowing from/to the VSG is fed back to the RTDS, to load the bus in the network model with that current. The simulated power system is a transfer from the Matlab/Simulink environment, in which the system was developed initially, to RSCAD [18] format. In section II the requirements for testing a VSG and the principle of a VSG are discussed and in section III the test set Real Time Simulation of a Power System with VSG Hardware in the Loop Vasileios Karapanos, Sjoerd de Haan, Member, IEEE, Kasper Zwetsloot Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science Delft University of Technology Delft, the Netherlands E-mails:
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected] k,((( 1 delays in measurement acquisition, signal processing, & actuation 2 accuracy in AC measurements (averaged over ≈ 5 cycles) 3 constraints on currents, voltages, power, etc. 4 guarantees on stability and robustness today: use DC measurement, exploit analog storage, & passive control 11 / 35
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