Voltage Stability Assessment and Enhancement in Power Systems

Voltage stability is a long standing issue in power systems and also is critical in the power system. This thesis aims to address the voltage stability problems. When wind generators reach maximum reactive power output, the bus voltage will operate near its steady-state stability limit. In order to avoid voltage instability, a dynamic L-index minimization approach is proposed by incorporating both wind generators and other reactive power resources. It then verifies the proposed voltage stability enhancement method using real data from load and wind generation in the IEEE 14 bus system. Additionally, power system is not necessary to always operate at the most voltage stable point as it requires high control efforts. Thus, we propose a novel L-index sensitivity based control algorithm using full Phasor measurement unit measurements for voltage stability enhancement. The proposed method uses both outputs of wind generators and additional reactive power compensators as control variables. The L-index sensitivity with respect to control variables is introduced. Based on these sensitivities, the control algorithm can minimise all the control efforts, while satisfying the predetermined L-index value. Additionally, a subsection control scheme is applied where both normal condition and weak condition are taken into account. It consists of the proposed L-index sensitivities based control algorithm and an overall L-index minimisation method. Threshold selection for the subsection control scheme is discussed and extreme learning machine is introduced for status fast classification to choose the method which has less power cost on the transmission line. Due to the high cost of PMUs, a voltage stability assessment method using partial Phasor measurement unit (PMU) measurements is proposed. Firstly, a new optimisation formulation is proposed that minimizes the number of PMUs considering the most sensitive buses. Then, extreme learning machine (ELM) is used for fast voltage estimation. In this way, the voltages at buses without PMUs can be rapidly obtained based on the PMUs measurements. Finally, voltage stability can be assessed by using L-index

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