TOWARDS OPTIMAL OPERATION AND CONTROL OF EMERGING ELECTRIC DISTRIBUTION NETWORKS

The growing integration of power-electronics converters enabled components causes low inertia in the evolving electric distribution networks, which also suffer from uncertainties due to renewable energy sources, electric demands, and anomalies caused by physical or cyber attacks, etc. These issues are addressed in this dissertation. First, a virtual synchronous generator (VSG) solution is provided for solar photovoltaics (PVs) to address the issues of low inertia and system uncertainties. Furthermore, for a campus AC microgrid, coordinated control of the PV-VSG and a combined heat and power (CHP) unit is proposed and validated. Second, for islanded AC microgrids composed of SGs and PVs, an improved three-layer predictive hierarchical power management framework is presented to provide economic operation and cyber-physical security while reducing uncertainties. This scheme providessuperior frequency regulation capability and maintains low system operating costs. Third, a decentralized strategy for coordinating adaptive controls of PVs and battery energy storage systems (BESSs) in islanded DC nanogrids is presented. Finally, for transient stability evaluation (TSE) of emerging electric distribution networks dominated by EV supercharging stations, a data-driven region of attraction (ROA) estimation approach is presented. The proposed data-driven method is more computationally efficient than traditional model-based methods, and it also allows for real-time ROA estimation for emerging electric distribution networks with complex dynamics

Small signal modeling and analysis of microgrid systems

This dissertation focuses on small-signal modeling and analysis of inverter based microgrid systems. The proposed microgrid consists of two microsources placed on two different buses. The buses are connected using a distribution feeder with some impedance. The proposed microgrid can operate with the grid support, or without the grid support. When operated without the grid support, the standalone system’s microsources participate in controlling the system voltage and frequency. For a non-inertia source, such as the inverter, the load perturbations play an important role in system dynamics. In paper-I, such complex system was studied. In the grid-tied mode, the microsources share the load demand with other sources that are present in the main grid. The control algorithm for such system is much simpler than that of the islanded system. However, when aggregated in multi-bus system, prohibitively higher order state-space models are formed. In paper-II, a reduced order modeling of such systems was considered. Singular perturbation method was applied to identify the two time-scale property of the system. In paper-III, a similar approach was taken to develop a reduced order model of the islanded system that was developed in paper-I. Application of such reduced order models were illustrated by using them to simulate a modified IEEE-37 bus microgrid system. The islanded microgrids system’s stability is characterized in paper-IV by the Markov Jump Linear System Analysis. Conservative bounds on the expected value of the state were determined from a combination of the Markov process parameters, the dynamics of each linear system, and the magnitude of the impulses. The conclusions were verified with the simulation results. --Abstract, page iii

Modeling of Inverter-Based Microgrid for Small-Signal and Large-Signal Stability Analysis

Integration of inverter-based resources (IBRs) such as solar photovoltaic, wind, and battery storage, is both a boon and a bane for electric power systems. On one hand, IBRs have helped in making electrical energy a clean (carbon-free) source of energy. On other hand, the dynamics of IBRs have changed the way power system studies have been carried out. With the advantages IBRs offer over conventional resources, it is assumed that a small distribution power system (microgrid) will have a 100% IBRs penetration in the future. Such a microgrid can operate in grid-connected mode or in an islanded mode. Both modes of operation bring challenges to system stability due to faster control dynamics of IBRs and can pose problems such as blackouts if the dynamics are not studied and mitigated properly. IBRs in a microgrid can operate in a grid-following (GFL) mode or grid-forming mode (GFM). We studied the effect of GFM inverters, GFL inverters, and elements of microgrid (such as lines, and transformers) on microgrid stability. We studied how solar radiation affects the bus voltage and how the inverter gains and line impedance can make a system unstable. Based on the study stable limits for a single inverter connected to a strong point of common coupling (PCC) were established. Since the study of a microgrid is still an evolving topic it has been observed that some elements such as a transformer are not modeled in detail for the stability study of the system. It was shown how detailed modeling of different transformer models will help in understanding the cause of high frequencies in the system following a disturbance. Droop type GFM inverters mimic the droop characteristics of the synchronous generator to control the frequency and voltage. Droop control is best suited for a power system where lines are highly inductive which is not the case for lines of a microgrid that are highly resistive. This results in a weak microgrid system. A modified primary control technique was developed for improving reactive power sharing between the inverters and thus making the microgrid system strong. Virtual Synchronous Generator (VSG) type of control of GFM inverters is another widely used control technique for GFM type of inverters. In an islanded microgrid GFM and GFL inverters work in parallel and interaction between these different types of inverter controls plays a huge role in system stability. Therefore, it is necessary to study the interactions of dynamics between GFM and GFL inverters to understand and define the stability limits of a microgrid system. We studied the inter-inverter dynamics in an islanded microgrid and demonstrated how in a deregulated market one inverter can aid another inverter to make the overall system more stable and reliable. A nonlinear study of inverters for large-signal stability was also performed for islanded microgrid system

Uncertainty and disturbance estimator design to shape and reduce the output impedance of inverter

Power inverters are becoming more and more common in the modern grid. Due to their switching nature, a passive filter is installed at the inverter output. This generates high output impedance which limits the inverter ability to maintain high power quality at the inverter output. This thesis deals with an impedance shaping approach to the design of power inverter control. The Uncertainty and Disturbance Estimator (UDE) is proposed as a candidate for direct formation of the inverter output impedance. The selection of UDE is motivated by the desire for the disturbance rejection control and the tracking controller to be decoupled. It is demonstrated in the thesis that due to this fact the UDE filter design directly influences the inverter output impedance and the reference model determines the inverter internal electromotive force. It was recently shown in the literature and further emphasized in this thesis that the classic low pass frequency design of the UDE cannot estimate periodical disturbances under the constraint of finite control bandwidth. Since for a power inverter both the reference signal and the disturbance signal are of periodical nature, the classic UDE lowpass filter design does not give optimal results. A new design approach is therefore needed. The thesis develops four novel designs of the UDE filter to significantly reduce the inverter output impedance and maintain low Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) of the inverter output voltage. The first design is the based on a frequency selective filter. This filter design shows superiority in both observing and rejecting periodical disturbances over the classic low pass filter design. The second design uses a multi-band stop design to reject periodical disturbances with some uncertainty in the frequency. The third solution uses a classic low pass filter design combined with a time delay to match zero phase estimation of the disturbance at the relevant spectrum. Furthermore, this solution is combined with a resonant tracking controller to reduce the tracking steady-state error in the output voltage. The fourth solution utilizes a low-pass filter combined with multiple delays to increase the frequency robustness. This method shows superior performance over the multi-band-stop and the time delayed filter in steady-state. All the proposed methods are validated through extensive simulation and experimental results

Optimal energy management and control of microgrids in modern electrical power systems

Microgrids (MGs) are becoming more popular in modern electric power systems owing to their reliability, efficiency, and simplicity. The proportional-integral (PI) based droop control mechanism has been widely used in the MG control domain as the setpoint generator for the primary controller which has several drawbacks. In order to mitigate these issues, and to enhance the transient and steady-state operations in islanded MGs, advanced control and intelligent optimization methodologies are presented in this dissertation. First, to improve the existing PI-based droop relationship in DCMGs, a multi-objective optimization (MOO) based optimal droop coefficient computation method is proposed. Considering the system voltage regulation, system total loss minimization, and enhanced current sharing among the distributed generators (DGs), the Pareto optimal front is obtained using the Elitist non dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA II). Then, a fuzzy membership function approach is introduced to extract the best compromise solution from the Pareto optimal front. The drawbacks of PI-based droop control cannot be entirely mitigated by tuning the droop gains. Hence, a droop free, approximate optimal feedback control strategy is proposed to optimally control DGs in islanded DCMGs. Further, to gain the fully optimal behavior, and to mitigate constant power load (CPL) instabilities, a decentralized optimal feedback control strategy is also introduced for the active loads (ALs) in the MG. In both algorithms, the approximate dynamic programming (ADP) method is employed to solve the constrained input infinite horizon optimal control problem by successive approximation of the value function via a linear in the parameter (LIP) neural network (NN). The NN weights are updated online by a concurrent reinforcement learning (RL) based tuning algorithm, and the convergence of the unknown weights to a neighborhood of the optimal weights is guaranteed without the persistence of excitation (PE). Finally, a local optimal control strategy is presented to path optimization of islanded ACMGs to enhance the transient operations while mitigating the voltage and frequency deviations caused by the traditional droop control. Optimal state and control transient trajectories in the d-q reference frame are obtained by Pontryagin's minimum principle which drives each DG from a given initial condition to their steady-state manifold. Both simulation and experimental results are presented to validate the concepts

Nonlinear Stability Analysis of the Classical Nested PI Control of Voltage Sourced Inverters

This note provides the first nonlinear analysis of the industry standard "partial decoupling plus nested PI loops" control of voltage sourced inverters. In spite of its enormous popularity, to date only linearization-based tools are available to carry out the analysis, which are unable to deal with large-signal stability and fail to provide estimates of the domain of attraction of the desired equilibrium. Instrumental to establish our result is the representation of the closed-loop dynamics in a suitable Lure-like representation, that is, a forward system in closed-loop with a static nonlinearity. The stability analysis is then done by generating an adequate Popov multiplier. Comparison with respect to linearization is discussed together with numerical results demonstrating non-conservativeness of the proposed conditions