Energy Shaping Control for Stabilization of Interconnected Voltage Source Converters in Weakly-Connected AC Microgrid Systems

With the ubiquitous installations of renewable energy resources such as solar and wind, for decentralized power applications across the United States, microgrids are being viewed as an avenue for achieving this goal. Various independent system operators and regional transmission operators such as Southwest Power Pool (SPP), Midcontinent System Operator (MISO), PJM Interconnection and Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) manage the transmission and generation systems that host the distributed energy resources (DERs). Voltage source converters typically interconnect the DERs to the utility system and used in High voltage dc (HVDC) systems for transmitting power throughout the United States. A microgrid configuration is built at the 13.8kV 4.75MVA National Center for Reliable Energy Transmission (NCREPT) testing facility for performing grid-connected and islanded operation of interconnected voltage source converters. The interconnected voltage source converters consist of a variable voltage variable frequency (VVVF) drive, which powers a regenerative (REGEN) load bench acting as a distributed energy resource emulator. Due to the weak-grid interface in islanded mode testing, a voltage instability occurs on the VVVF dc link voltage causing the system to collapse. This dissertation presents a new stability theorem for stabilizing interconnected voltage source converters in microgrid systems with weak-grid interfaces. The new stability theorem is derived using the concepts of Dirac composition in Port-Hamiltonian systems, passivity in physical systems, eigenvalue analysis and robust analysis based on the edge theorem for parametric uncertainty. The novel stability theorem aims to prove that all members of the classes of voltage source converter-based microgrid systems can be stabilized using an energy-shaping control methodology. The proposed theorems and stability analysis justifies the development of the Modified Interconnection and Damping Assignment Passivity-Based Control (Modified IDA-PBC) method to be utilized in stabilizing the microgrid configuration at NCREPT for mitigating system instabilities. The system is simulated in MATLAB/SimulinkTM using the Simpower toolbox to observe the system’s performance of the designed controller in comparison to the decoupled proportional intergral controller. The simulation results verify that the Modified-IDA-PBC is a viable option for dc bus voltage control of interconnected voltage source converters in microgrid systems