A control approach for the operation of DG units under variations of interfacing impedance in grid-connected mode

Abstract

Voltage source converter (VSC) can be considered as the heart of interfacing system for the integration of Distributed Generation (DG) sources into the power grid. Several control methods have been proposed for integration of DG sources into the power grid, and injection of high quality power. However, the converter-based DG interface is subjected to the unexpected uncertainties, which highly influence performance of control loop of DG unit and operation of interfaced converter. The interfacing impedance seen by interfaced VSC may considerably vary in power grid, and the stability of interfaced converter is highly sensitive to the impacts of this impedance changes; then, DG unit cannot inject appropriate currents. To deal with the instability problem, a control method based on fractional order active sliding mode is proposed in this paper, which is less sensitive to variations of interfacing impedance. A fractional sliding surface, which demonstrates the desired dynamics of system is developed and then, the controller is designed in two phases as sliding and reaching phases to keep the control loop stable. Stability issues of the control method are discussed in details and the conditions in which the proposed model works in a stable operating mode is defined. The proposed control method takes a role to provide high quality power injection and ensures precise references tracking and fast response despite such uncertainties. Theoretical analyses and simulation results are established to confirm the performance and feasibility of the proposed control method in DG technology.