Stability of Renewable Energy based Microgrid in Autonomous Operation

This paper develops a comprehensive small-signal model of hybrid renewable-energy-based microgrid (MG) in an attempt to perceive oscillatory stability performance and capture the potential interaction between low-frequency critical modes within the MG. Trajectories of sensitive modes due to controller gain variations were evaluated in order to determine the stability boundaries. It was noticeable that various power-sharing schemes significantly influenced the small-signal stability of MG. Moreover, modal interaction emerged due to the proximity of RES-based DG units and non-linear dynamic behaviour of the sensitive modes. The interaction may result in a more oscillatory situation which potentially leads to instability of MG. The low-frequency critical modes obtained from eigenvalues analysis were then verified with the help of nonlinear time domain simulations. The presented work contributes to enhance the design and tuning of controller gain and propose appropriate power-sharing scheme within MG. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.