Search Results (84)

Grid-forming converters, with their voltage-source characteristics, can independently provide voltage support and thus have become a critical supporting technology for new-type power systems. However, they suffer from overcurrent risks and insufficient voltage support capability during grid faults. To overcome these shortcomings, this paper proposes an adaptive transient-voltage support strategy for grid-forming PMSG wind turbines based on DC capacitor-voltage synchronization. First, the inertia synchronization and autonomous-voltage support mechanisms of such grid-forming wind turbines are analyzed. Second, based on power-flow equations and the grid-forming topology, key factors affecting the grid-connected voltage during faults are identified, and an adaptive voltage-support strategy using fuzzy control is developed. Finally, a grid-forming wind power system is modeled on the PSCAD/EMTDC platform, where the proposed strategy raises the minimum PCC voltage to 0.62 p.u. and increases reactive power injection by 0.13 p.u. under a 70% deep sag, successfully fulfilling low-voltage ride-through requirements. Full article

With the fast penetration of renewable energy resources (RERs) in modern power grids, system inertia is gradually decreasing, whereby threatening frequency stability. Grid-forming (GFM) permanent magnet synchronous generator (PMSG) wind turbines have emerged as a promising solution for supporting and maintaining power system stability. Nevertheless, many studies neglect the inherent intermittency and limited power capability of RERs. As a result, the dynamic interactions between machine-side and grid-side converters are often neglected, and the DC link is commonly modeled as either an ideal voltage source or a controlled current source, which may lead to inaccurate representations of system dynamics. As a solution, this paper investigates the influence of RER intermittency and power constraints on DC-link dynamics and their impact on the frequency support performance of GFM PMSGs. First, the overall system is configured using back-to-back voltage source converters, and the system’s dynamic equations are presented. Afterwards, the impact of wind speed variations is thoroughly discussed, alongside a critical examination of the requirements specified in IEEE Standard 2800-2022. Furthermore, a supervisory curtailment strategy is proposed to ensure overall system stability under severe load disturbances when the PMSG is unable to supply the required power. Finally, detailed case studies are conducted to: (1) assess the influence of variable wind speed and DC-link voltage control on the dynamic response of PMSGs, and (2) compare the performance of the accurate DC-link dynamic model with conventional idealized and simplified models. Full article

With the increasing integration of wind power into the grid, power systems are exhibiting characteristics of low inertia and low short-circuit ratio. Virtual synchronous generator (VSG) control technology, which emulates the operational characteristics of synchronous generators, can effectively provide voltage and inertia support to the grid. However, its application in grid-connected permanent magnet synchronous generator (PMSG)-based wind turbines is prone to low-frequency oscillation issues. To address this, this paper first establishes a damping torque model for the grid-forming PMSG. The damping torque method is employed to quantify the damping characteristics of the system in the low-frequency band, while analyzing the influence of various torque components on the system’s damping composition and low-frequency oscillations. Based on this, a machine-side current loop controller incorporating a novel exponential sliding-mode control (NESMC) and a high gain disturbance observer (HGDO) is proposed. This controller aims to reduce the machine-side negative damping effect, thereby effectively suppressing low-frequency oscillations in the system. Finally, a simulation model is built in MATLAB/Simulink to verify the correctness of the damping torque analysis and the effectiveness of the proposed control method. Full article

Interest in isolated electrical systems powered by renewable energy has driven the development of alternatives to traditional Wind–Diesel Systems (WDS) due to their unwanted emissions and regulatory constraints. In this context, clean and efficient hybrid architectures are needed to comply with regulations and ensure stable operation under variations in user load and wind generation. This paper proposes an integrated isolated hybrid system consisting of a fuel cell replacing the Diesel Generator (DG). To fulfil the role of the synchronous generator in the diesel-group, the fuel cell operates under a Grid-Forming (GFM) control scheme, acting as a virtual synchronous machine that establishes the system’s voltage and frequency. The main aim of the hybrid system is for the wind turbine to supply most of the active power to the loads, thereby minimising hydrogen consumption. A key challenge in these systems is maintaining power balance, particularly preventing reverse flows in the fuel cell system, which has less margin than the diesel generator. In this paper, a Dump Load (DL) quickly dissipates excess power and prevents reverse power conditions. Overall, the proposed system eliminates the need for diesel generation, thereby eliminating emissions while maintaining operational stability. Simulation results demonstrate the correct functioning of the system in the presence of significant variations in load and wind power generation. Full article

Controlled islanding is the last line of defense to prevent blackouts in power systems. This paper proposes a novel optimal splitting sections searching method for power systems with grid-forming (GFM) wind turbines, based on branch transient potential energy. First, an improved generator internal node potential energy is defined to uniformly characterize the transient energy accumulation of both synchronous generators and GFM wind turbines; coherent generator groups are then identified using K-means clustering. Second, a splitting sections searching model is formulated with the objective of minimizing the sum of branch stability indices (BSIs) on the splitting sections. An island inertia constraint is introduced as a penalty term to address the reduced system inertia caused by grid-following (GFL) wind turbines. An improved biogeography-based optimization (BBO) algorithm integrated with tabu search (TS) is employed for the solution. Finally, simulations are conducted on a modified New England 39-bus system. The results demonstrate that, compared to traditional models focusing on power imbalance or power flow disruption, the proposed method achieves better frequency and voltage stability in the formed islands, although this improvement comes at the cost of increased load shedding in certain scenarios. In power systems with GFM wind turbines, both frequency and voltage deviations are reduced, thereby validating the effectiveness of the proposed method in enhancing island stability. Full article

The optimal control of sustainable energy supply systems, including renewable energies and energy storage, takes a central role in the decarbonization of industrial systems. However, the use of fluctuating renewable energies leads to fluctuations in energy generation and requires a suitable control strategy for the complex systems in order to ensure energy supply. In this paper, we consider an electrified power-to-heat system which is designed to supply heat in the form of superheated steam for industrial processes. The system consists of a high-temperature heat pump for heat supply, a wind turbine for power generation, a sensible thermal energy storage for storing excess heat, and a steam generator for providing steam. If the system’s energy demand cannot be covered by electricity from the wind turbine, additional electricity must be purchased from the power grid. For this system, we investigate the cost-optimal operation, aiming to minimize the electricity cost from the grid by a suitable system control depending on the available wind power and the amount of stored thermal energy. This is a decision-making problem under uncertainty regarding the future prices for electricity from the grid and the future generation of wind power. The resulting stochastic optimal control problem is treated as finite-horizon Markov decision process for a multi-dimensional controlled state process. We first consider the classical backward recursion technique for solving the associated dynamic programming equation for the value function and compute the optimal decision rule. Since that approach suffers from the curse of dimensionality, we also apply reinforcement learning techniques, namely Q-learning, that are able to provide a good approximate solution to the optimization problem within reasonable time. Full article

In large wind farms, uneven voltage distribution caused by feeder impedance and turbine spacing may pose safety hazards and reduce operational efficiency. This paper proposes a two-layer voltage coordination optimal control method for wind farms that balances both grid-connection point voltage levels and turbine-end voltage safety. The outer layer tracks voltage commands issued by the AVC master station at the point of common coupling (PCC), while the inner layer establishes a global optimization model considering generator terminal voltage safety. The second-order cone relaxation method converts nonlinear constraints into solvable convex forms. Through a two-layer iterative solution, it achieves optimal allocation of active and reactive power between wind turbines and static var compensators (SVGs) within the field, thereby enhancing the active power output at the wind farm port and increasing the system’s reactive power margin. Simulation results demonstrate that compared to conventional unified power factor control, the proposed method effectively enhances terminal voltage security, increases wind farm power generation, and boosts system reactive power reserve capacity while stably tracking PCC voltage commands. Full article

The increasing penetration of wind energy has led to reduced system inertia and heightened sensitivity to dynamic disturbances in modern power systems. This paper proposes a Newton–Raphson-Based Optimizer (NRBO) for tuning proportional, integral, and feedforward gains of a grid-forming converter applied to a wind energy conversion system operating in a low-inertia environment. The study considers an aggregated wind farm modeled as a single equivalent DFIG-based wind turbine connected to an infinite bus, with detailed dynamic representations of the converter control loops, synchronous generator dynamics, and network interactions formulated in the dq reference frame. The grid-forming converter operates in a grid-connected mode, regulating voltage and active–reactive power exchange. The NRBO algorithm is employed to optimize a composite objective function defined in terms of voltage deviation and active–reactive power mismatches. Performance is evaluated under two representative scenarios: small-signal disturbances induced by wind torque variations and short-duration symmetrical voltage disturbances of 20 ms. Comparative results demonstrate that NRBO achieves lower objective values, faster transient recovery, and reduced oscillatory behavior compared with Differential Evolution, Particle Swarm Optimization, Philosophical Proposition Optimizer, and Exponential Distribution Optimization. Statistical analyses over multiple independent runs confirm the robustness and consistency of NRBO through significantly reduced performance dispersion. The findings indicate that the proposed optimization framework provides an effective simulation-based approach for enhancing the transient performance of grid-forming wind energy converters in low-inertia systems, with potential relevance for supporting stable operation under increased renewable penetration. Improving the reliability and controllability of wind-dominated power grids enhances the delivery of cost-effective, cleaner, and more resilient energy systems, aiding in expanding sustainable electricity access in alignment with SDG7. Full article

High penetration of wind farms into the power grid lowers system inertia and compromises stability. This paper proposes a grid-forming control strategy for Permanent Magnet Synchronous Generator (PMSG) wind turbines based on DC-link voltage matching and virtual inertia. First, a relationship between grid frequency and DC-link voltage is established, replacing the need for a phase-locked loop. Then, DC voltage dynamics are utilized to trigger a real-time switching of the power tracking curve, releasing the rotor’s kinetic energy for inertia response. This is further coordinated with a de-loading control that maintains active power reserves through over-speeding or pitch control. Finally, the MATLAB/Simulink simulation results and RT-LAB hardware-in-the-loop experiments demonstrate the capability of the proposed control strategy to provide rapid active power support during grid disturbances. Full article

The large-scale integration of doubly fed wind turbines reduces the inertia level of power systems and increases the risk of frequency instability. This paper analyzes the performance characteristics and application ranges of different types of energy storage technologies and addresses the limitations of conventional control methods, which cannot adjust energy storage power output in real time according to frequency variations and may hinder frequency recovery during the restoration stage. Based on a grid-forming doubly fed wind turbine model, this study adopts a hybrid ultracapacitor energy storage system as the auxiliary storage device. The hybrid configuration increases energy density and extends the effective support duration of the storage system, thereby meeting the requirements of longer-term frequency regulation. Furthermore, the paper proposes an adaptive inertia control strategy that combines an improved variable-K droop control with adaptive virtual inertia control to enhance the stability of doubly fed wind turbines under load fluctuations. Simulation studies conducted in MATLAB 2022/Simulink demonstrate that the proposed method significantly improves frequency stability in load disturbance scenarios. The strategy not only strengthens the frequency support capability of grid-connected wind turbine units but also accelerates frequency recovery, which plays an important role in maintaining power system frequency stability. Full article

The integration of grid-forming wind turbines introduces forced oscillations and harmonic/inter-harmonic interference, which degrades the accuracy of traditional energy-flow-based source localization methods. To address this issue, this paper proposes a novel method based on improved complete ensemble empirical mode decomposition with Adaptive Noise (ICEEMDAN) and an improved Teager energy operator (ITEO). The proposed method first employs ICEEMDAN to adaptively decompose wide-area measurement signals, effectively suppressing mode mixing and noise. Then, ITEO is utilized to extract the dominant oscillation components. By incorporating an adjustable computation window, ITEO enhances frequency selectivity, amplifying force oscillations while suppressing high-frequency noise, leading to robust energy estimation. Following this, the dissipative modal energy flow is calculated from the reconstructed time-domain waveforms. Ultimately, the disturbance source is precisely identified based on the dissipative energy flow theory. The method is validated through extensive simulations on a multi-bus test system with grid-forming wind turbines, considering disturbances from both synchronous generator excitations and wind turbine internal controls, as well as in high-noise environments. Additional validation using a real-world oscillation event from the ISO New England system confirms that the proposed method achieves superior accuracy and robustness compared to conventional methods. Full article

With the increase in wind power penetration, the stable operation of wind turbines under the new power system is facing severe challenges. The grid-forming wind power technology operates in a self-synchronous mode, which can provide voltage and frequency support for the system without being affected by the phase-locked loop, and is also suitable for operation under weak power grids. However, the current research for the grid-forming (GFM) permanent magnet synchronous generator (PMSG) ignores the DC-link dynamics generated by the wind turbine, which makes the sub-synchronous oscillation (SSO) phenomenon under different grid conditions and lacks a physical explanation. In this paper, the SSO problem in the grid-forming PMSG is studied, and the study reveals that the reduction in the DC-link voltage control bandwidth of the machine-side converter (MSC) is the main cause. To this end, an improved damping method is proposed, which introduces a low-pass filter branch in the reactive power control loop and takes the DC-link voltage tracking error as a compensation term. The small-signal analysis and simulation results show that the proposed method has significant effectiveness. Full article

As wind farms connect with power grids via long-distance transmission lines and multiple transformers, the resulting networks exhibit inherently weak and fluctuating grid strength—subject to dynamic variations from external disturbances like generation tripping; thus, ensuring stable operation presents a critical challenge. To address this issue, grid-following/grid-forming mode switching has emerged as a strategic approach, where wind turbine generators strategically switch between grid-following control in strong grids and grid-forming control in weak grids. This paper proposes an impedance-based switching criteria design methodology, ensuring system stability under dynamic grid strength variations. Leveraging sequence impedance analysis in frequency domain, we establish a stability boundary for mode transitions. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed criteria maintain stable operation, enhancing robustness against grid strength fluctuations. Full article

With the proliferation of wind power generation, the receiving end grids exhibit unprecedented dynamic characteristics, imposing critical stability challenges on grid-connected wind turbine’s converter. To address this, wind turbine converter control strategies have evolved beyond traditional grid-following (GFL) methods to include grid-forming (GFM), mode-switching, and hybrid GFL-GFM controls. This paper establishes a small-signal model for hybrid GFL-GFM-controlled wind turbines to analyze stability at varying grid strengths, guiding the selection of coefficients in hybrid mode. Simulation tests validate the theoretical framework. Full article

Renewable power generation has experienced significant global deployment, leading to the replacement of synchronous generators, which traditionally defined the slow dynamics of power systems. As a result, stability issues related to converter dynamics are becoming increasingly prominent. It is crucial for the grid system to be sure that the renewable generation is robust with regard to the converter dynamics to avoid instability issues. This paper focuses on enhancing wind farm robustness to minimize the risk of converter-driven stability phenomena, considering both grid-feeding and grid-forming control schemes. Three software solutions to improve the stability criteria at the wind turbine level are evaluated, assessing their impact on system performance across various frequency ranges. Additionally, a second solution at the plant level, separate from the software solutions, is also included in the scope of the paper. Moreover, a trade-off analysis was carried out to evaluate these different solutions. Finally, the results showed that the stability criteria can be improved by adopting software solutions without additional costs, but the filter as a plant solution could mitigate the harmonic emission and provide extra reactive power capabilities. Full article