Journal
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS
Volume 33, Issue 10, Pages 8488-8499Publisher
IEEE-INST ELECTRICAL ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS INC
DOI: 10.1109/TPEL.2017.2785218
Keywords
Frequency regulation; power converter; power system; renewable energy source (RES); virtual inertia
Categories
Funding
- National Research Foundation, Prime Minister's Office, Singapore under the Energy Programme
- Energy Market Authority [NRF2015EWT-EIRP002-007]
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Renewable energy sources (RESs), e.g., wind and solar photovoltaics, have been increasingly used to meet worldwide growing energy demands and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, RESs are normally coupled to the power grid through fast-response power converters without any inertia, leading to decreased power system inertia. As a result, the grid frequency may easily go beyond the acceptable range under severe frequency events, resulting in undesirable load-shedding, cascading failures, or even large-scale blackouts. To address the ever-decreasing inertia issue, this paper proposes the concept of distributed power system virtual inertia, which can be implemented by grid-connected power converters. Without modifications of system hardware, power system inertia can be emulated by the energy stored in the dc-link capacitors of grid-connected power converters. By regulating the dc-link voltages in proportional to the grid frequency, the dc-link capacitors are aggregated into an extremely large equivalent capacitor serving as an energy buffer for frequency support. Furthermore, the limitation of virtual inertia, together with its design parameters, is identified. Finally, the feasibility of the proposed concept is validated through simulation and experimental results, which indicate that 12.5% and 50% improvements of the frequency nadir and rate of change of frequency can be achieved.
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