Offset-free feedback linearisation control of a three-phase grid-connected photovoltaic system

In this study, a state feedback control law is combined with a disturbance observer to enhance disturbance rejection capability of a grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) inverter. The control law is based on input-output feedback linearisation technique, while the existing disturbance observer is simplified and adopted for the system under investigation. The resulting control law has a proportional-integral (PI)/almost PI-derivative-like structure, which is convenient for real-time implementation. The objective of the proposed approach is to improve the DC-bus voltage regulation, while at the same time control the power exchange between the PV system and the grid. The stability of the closed-loop system under the composite controller is guaranteed by simple design parameters. Both simulation and experimental results show that the proposed method has significant abilities to initiate fast current control and accurate adjustment of the DC-bus voltage under model uncertainty and external disturbance

Extended State Observer-Based Sliding-Mode Control for Three-Phase Power Converters

This paper proposes an extended state observer (ESO) based second-order sliding-mode (SOSM) control for three-phase two-level grid-connected power converters. The proposed control technique forces the input currents to track the desired values, which can indirectly regulate the output voltage while achieving a user-defined power factor. The presented approach has two control loops. A current control loop based on an SOSM and a dc-link voltage regulation loop which consists of an ESO plus SOSM. In this work, the load connected to the dc-link capacitor is considered as an external disturbance. An ESO is used to asymptotically reject this external disturbance. Therefore, its design is considered in the control law derivation to achieve a high performance. Theoretical analysis is given to show the closed-loop behavior of the proposed controller and experimental results are presented to validate the control algorithm under a real power converter prototyp

Nonlinear Control Approaches of Several Power Converters

The exploitation and utilization of renewable energy have become the important measures taken by countries all over the world to solve the contradiction among energy shortage, economic development and ecological environment. As an important bridge and energy conversion channel between renewable energy and electric energy, power converter is a basic form of transformation and control of electric energy, which plays a vital role in the exploitation and utilization of renewable energy. In the past few decades, due to the significance of both theory and practical applications, the study of power converter has become one of the hotspots of research in the field of power electronics and automation. The study of power converter control strategies is an important study research of power converter. The control strategy as the core of the control system directly determines the dynamic and static performance of the power converter. The power converter system is a typical nonlinear system. However, most of power converter control strategies are designed based on linearization control methods, which makes the control system sensitive to system parameter variations, slow dynamic response speed and poor steady-state performance, etc. Thus, in order to further improve the dynamic and static performances of power converters, the investigation of using nonlinear control methods for power converters is a challenging and meaningful work. Based on modern control theory utilizing nonlinear control approaches, this dissertation investigates the nonlinear control strategies design for several typical power converters, and the main contributions are as follows: (1) The important role of power converters in renewable energy power generation systems is introduced. Then the internal and overseas research situations of the control strategies design for the several typical power converters are classified and summarized, where the theoretical significance and the practical application backgrounds are given, and the study structures and contents of this dissertation are presented. (2) Two system models are built for the DC-DC Buck converters, respectively, i.e., the nominal system model and uncertain system model. Based on the nominal system without considering parametric uncertainties, the single-loop adaptive control strategy is built by adaptive and back-stepping control approach, and the double-loop adaptive control strategy is set up by adaptive and sliding mode control approach. Based on the uncertain system model, the single-loop disturbance observer based control strategy is developed using designed disturbance observer and back-stepping control technique, and the double-loop disturbance observer based control strategy is synthesized using designed disturbance observer and sliding mode control method. (3) The control strategy of voltage regulation and current tracking for three phase two-level grid-connected power rectifiers is presented. By using power-invariant Park’s transformation, an averaged mathematical model of power converters is obtained in synchronous reference frame. Then a novel control strategy using adaptive control and technique is proposed to regulate the dc-link output voltage as well as track a desired current reference. More specifically, an efficient adaptive controller is established in the external loop for regulating dc-link output voltage in the presence of external disturbances. A set of controllers are designed in the internal loop to force the input currents track their desired values. (4) A novel robust control strategy is proposed for three-level neutral-point-clamped power rectifiers. The proposed control scheme consists of three control loops, i.e., instantaneous power tracking control loop, voltage regulation loop and voltage balancing loop. First, in the power tracking control loop, a set of adaptive sliding mode controllers are established to drive the active and reactive power tracking their desired values via radial basis function neural network technology. In the voltage regulation loop, an efficient but simple adaptive controller is designed to regulate dc-link output voltage where the load is considered as an external disturbance. Moreover, a composite controller is developed in the voltage balancing loop to ensure imbalance voltages between two dc-link capacitors close to zero, in which a reduced-order observer is used to estimate sinusoidal disturbance improving the converter performance. (5) Based on the second order sliding mode control technique, a novel control strategy is proposed for three-phase power rectifiers under unbalanced grid conditions to achieve cooperative control between power and current. A consolidated control objective which can be flexibly adjust among the degree of oscillation in active and reactive powers and balance of three-phase current is obtained in the stationary frame. Based on the dynamic of the converter and control objective, a control scheme in a cascaded framework is presented, in which an adaptive observer is applied to estimate the positiveand negative-sequence of grid voltage without complex filtering process. In the current tracking loop, the super–twisting algorithm current controller coupled with super-twisting differentiator is implemented to force the currents to their references, featuring a fast dynamic and an improved robustness. Also, in the voltage regulation loop, an effective composite controller is developed for regulation of the output voltage, where a supertwisting observer is used to estimate load disturbance. (6) The problem of regulation output voltage of three-phase two level filtered voltage source inverters is presented using disturbance observer-based integral sliding mode control approach. First, the dynamics of the inverter are reformulated to facilitate the use of the proposed control strategy, which consider the parametric uncertainties of filter. A disturbance observer is designed to estimate the parametric uncertainties and external disturbances. Then, an integral sliding mode surface is established considering the voltage tracking error, its integral and the estimations of the parametric uncertainties and external disturbances. A sliding mode controller is proposed such that the systems are robustness to the admissible uncertainties and disturbances and satisfy the reaching condition. The stability of the closed-loop system is proved based on the Lyapunov theory

Model-based control methods to improve the power qualify of grid-connected single-phase inverters.

Power electronic converters are commonly used for interfacing distributing generation sources (DGs) to the electrical power system networks. This is necessary because these DGs usually have different output characteristics and cannot be connected directly to the local load and/or the grid. The power electronic front-end converter is an inverter whose dc link is fed by an ac/dc converter or by a dc/dc converter, according to the DG source type. The commercial front-end inverters are designed to operate either in grid-connected (GC) mode or in stand-alone (SA) mode. In the SA mode, the inverter is connected to local load, but in the GC mode the inverter must be connected to the utility grid and a local load could be connected to this system as well. Based on this, any designed or proposed controller for such systems should work well in both operation modes. The control objective in SA mode is to improve the quality of the local load voltage, and the control objective in GC mode is to inject clean current to the grid with low total harmonic distortion (THD). Most of the control schemes in the literature have been designed to work in one of these operation modes and ensure low THD either for the local load voltage or for the injected grid current. However, some of the existing control schemes in the literature proposed different control architectures for each operation mode. Moreover, there are a few researches have been reported in the literature based on the cascaded control theory to obtain low THD for both the local load voltage simultaneously with the injected current to the grid in the grid-connected mode. Due to the growing penetration of the DG sources in the residential applications, single-phase grid-connected inverters have gained much attention. For this reason, the single-phase grid-connected inverter systems have been chosen in our study. Since such systems have nonlinearity in its behavior, different nonlinear model-based control schemes have been designed in order to improve the quality of the local load voltage while injecting clean current to the grid for single-phase grid-connected inverter systems by using single structure control scheme. Furthermore, the proposed control schemes ensure the seamless transfer between GC and SA operation modes without adjusting the controller structure and with self-synchronization ability

Control and Stability of Residential Microgrid with Grid-Forming Prosumers

The rise of the prosumers (producers-consumers), residential customers equipped with behind-the-meter distributed energy resources (DER), such as battery storage and rooftop solar PV, offers an opportunity to use prosumer-owned DER innovatively. The thesis rests on the premise that prosumers equipped with grid-forming inverters can not only provide inertia to improve the frequency performance of the bulk grid but also support islanded operation of residential microgrids (low-voltage distribution feeder operated in an islanded mode), which can improve distribution grids’ resilience and reliability without purposely designing low-voltage (LV) distribution feeders as microgrids. Today, grid-following control is predominantly used to control prosumer DER, by which the prosumers behave as controlled current sources. These grid-following prosumers deliver active and reactive power by staying synchronized with the existing grid. However, they cannot operate if disconnected from the main grid due to the lack of voltage reference. This gives rise to the increasing interest in the use of grid-forming power converters, by which the prosumers behave as voltage sources. Grid-forming converters regulate their output voltage according to the reference of their own and exhibit load sharing with other prosumers even in islanded operation. Making use of grid-forming prosumers opens up opportunities to improve distribution grids’ resilience and enhance the genuine inertia of highly renewable-penetrated power systems. Firstly, electricity networks in many regional communities are prone to frequent power outages. Instead of purposely designing the community as a microgrid with dedicated grid-forming equipment, the LV feeder can be turned into a residential microgrid with multiple paralleled grid-forming prosumers. In this case, the LV feeder can operate in both grid-connected and islanded modes. Secondly, gridforming prosumers in the residential microgrid behave as voltage sources that respond naturally to the varying loads in the system. This is much like synchronous machines extracting kinetic energy from rotating masses. “Genuine” system inertia is thus enhanced, which is fundamentally different from the “emulated” inertia by fast frequency response (FFR) from grid-following converters. Against this backdrop, this thesis mainly focuses on two aspects. The first is the small-signal stability of such residential microgrids. In particular, the impact of the increasing number of grid-forming prosumers is studied based on the linearised model. The impact of the various dynamic response of primary sources is also investigated. The second is the control of the grid-forming prosumers aiming to provide sufficient inertia for the system. The control is focused on both the inverters and the DC-stage converters. Specifically, the thesis proposes an advanced controller for the DC-stage converters based on active disturbance rejection control (ADRC), which observes and rejects the “total disturbance” of the system, thereby enhancing the inertial response provided by prosumer DER. In addition, to make better use of the energy from prosumer-owned DER, an adaptive droop controller based on a piecewise power function is proposed, which ensures that residential ESS provide little power in the steady state while supplying sufficient power to cater for the demand variation during the transient state. Proposed strategies are verified by time-domain simulations

Microgrids/Nanogrids Implementation, Planning, and Operation

Today’s power system is facing the challenges of increasing global demand for electricity, high-reliability requirements, the need for clean energy and environmental protection, and planning restrictions. To move towards a green and smart electric power system, centralized generation facilities are being transformed into smaller and more distributed ones. As a result, the microgrid concept is emerging, where a microgrid can operate as a single controllable system and can be viewed as a group of distributed energy loads and resources, which can include many renewable energy sources and energy storage systems. The energy management of a large number of distributed energy resources is required for the reliable operation of the microgrid. Microgrids and nanogrids can allow for better integration of distributed energy storage capacity and renewable energy sources into the power grid, therefore increasing its efficiency and resilience to natural and technical disruptive events. Microgrid networking with optimal energy management will lead to a sort of smart grid with numerous benefits such as reduced cost and enhanced reliability and resiliency. They include small-scale renewable energy harvesters and fixed energy storage units typically installed in commercial and residential buildings. In this challenging context, the objective of this book is to address and disseminate state-of-the-art research and development results on the implementation, planning, and operation of microgrids/nanogrids, where energy management is one of the core issues

A Virtual Space Vectors based Model Predictive Control for Three-Level Converters

Three-phase three-level (3-L) voltage source converters (VSC), e.g., neutral-point clamped (NPC) converters, T-type converters, etc., have been deemed to be suitable for a wide range of medium- to high-power applications in microgrids (MGs) and bulk power systems. Compared to their two-level (2-L) counterparts, adopting 3-L VSCs in the MG applications not only reduces the voltage stress across the power semiconductor devices, which allows achieving higher voltage levels, but also improves the quality of the converter output waveforms, which further leads to considerably smaller output ac passive filters. Various control strategies have been proposed and implemented for 3-L VSCs. Among all the existing control methods, finite-control-set model predictive control (FCS-MPC) has been extensively investigated and applied due to its simple and intuitive design, fast-dynamic response and robustness against parameter uncertainties. However, to implement an FCS-MPC on a 3-L VSC, a multi-objective cost function, which consists of a term dedicated specifically to control the dc-link capacitor voltages such that the neutral-point voltage (NP-V) oscillations are minimized, must be designed. Nevertheless, selecting proper weighting factors for the multiple control objectives is difficult and time consuming. Additionally, adding the dc-link capacitor voltages balancing term to the cost function distributes the controller effort among different control targets, which severely impacts the primary goal of the FCS-MPC. Furthermore, to control the dc-link capacitor voltages, additional sensing circuitries are usually necessary to measure the dc-link capacitor voltages and currents, which consequently increases the system cost, volume and wiring complexity as well as reduces overall reliability. To address all the aforementioned challenges, in this dissertation research, a novel FCS-MPC method using virtual space vectors (VSVs), which do not affect the dc-link capacitor voltages of the 3-L VSCs, was proposed, implemented and validated. The proposed FCS-MPC strategy has the capability to achieve inherent balanced dc-link capacitor voltages. Additionally, the demonstrated control technique not only simplifies the controller design by allowing the use of a simplified cost function, but also improves the quality of the 3-L VSC output waveforms. Furthermore, the execution time of the proposed control algorithm was significantly reduced compared to that of the existing one. Lastly, the proposed FCS-MPC using the VSVs reduces the hardware cost and complexity as the additional dc-link capacitor voltages and current sensors are not required, which further enhances the overall system reliability