Study of Seamless Microgrid Transition Operation Using Grid-Forming Inverters: Preprint

Research output: Contribution to conferencePaper

Abstract

This paper investigates operational techniques to achieve smooth microgrid (MG) transitions by dispatching the grid-forming (GFM) inverter. In traditional approaches, the GFM inverter must switch between grid-following (GFL) and GFM control mode during MG transition operation. Today's inverter technology allows GFM inverters to always operate in GFM control mode, so it is worthy to explore how to use them to achieve smooth MG transition operation. This paper proposes three operational techniques: a traditional scheme of switching between GFL and GFM control; a new scheme of consistent GFM control and shifting the droop intercept up before islanding operation; and a new scheme of consistent GFM control and shifting the droop intercept up before synchronization operation. A full hardware setup is established to compare the three techniques and showcase their implementations in real-world applications. As expected, the third technique outperforms the others and exhibits the best transition performance because the GFM inverter maintains the same operating points during the transition operation. Therefore, we conclude that ensuring smooth MG transition operation requires the GFM inverter(s) to maintain the same operating points (v, f, P, Q, and phase angle) during the transition operation in addition to minimizes the point of common coupling power flow.
Original languageAmerican English
Number of pages9
StatePublished - 2023
Event49th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society (IECON 2023) - Singapore
Duration: 16 Oct 202319 Oct 2023

Conference

Conference49th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society (IECON 2023)
CitySingapore
Period16/10/2319/10/23

Bibliographical note

See NREL/CP-5D00-88633 for paper as published in proceedings

NREL Publication Number

  • NREL/CP-5D00-86102

Keywords

  • grid-following control
  • grid-forming control
  • islanding operaiton
  • synchronization operation

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