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VSG based control application for inverter-interfaced distributed generators

in microgrids

Conference Paper · November 2017

DOI: 10.1109/COBEP.2017.8257248

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 VSG BASED CONTROL APPLICATION FOR INVERTER-INTERFACED
DISTRIBUTED GENERATORS IN MICROGRIDS

César A. Palacio R.1, Marcello Mezaroba1, José Renes Pinheiro2

1
Santa Catarina State University - UDESC, Electric Power Processing Group - nPEE, Joinville - SC, Brazil
2
Federal University of Santa Maria - UFSM, Power Electronics and Control Group, Santa Maria – RS, Brazil
e-mail: cesar.apr21@gmail.com, marcello.mezaroba@udesc.br, jrenes@gepoc.ufsm.br

Abstract – The distributed generation (DG) growth distributed generation (DG) up growth implications. DG
presents new grid configurations and needs, as it ensures systems from renewable energy sources like the solar or wind
frequency stability in grid connected mode as well as based should be operated connected through power-
seamlessly operation in island connected mode. Control electronics based voltage converters, commonly in one stage
schemes for improvement of inverter-interfaced units DC-AC or two stages DC-DC-AC. The DC-AC converters are
operation are in constantly development. This paper called inverters and these DG systems as ‘inverter-interfaced’.
presents a virtual synchronous generator (VSG) based With more power from the inverter-interfaced DG units, the
topology for microgrids applications. A brief concept absolute reserve power from synchronous generators and the
review is done and simulation results for the case study are grid inertia constant are smaller due to the lower rated power
presented. of the rotating synchronous generators. As a result, the
frequency response shows faster behavior with higher
Keywords – Virtual synchronous generator, distributed maximum frequency deviations when more DG units are
generation, microgrids, power converter, droop control, employed. The controllers designed to regulate the
inverter. performance of the DG units participate also in improving the
grid’s voltage stability. To maximize the benefits of utilizing
NOMENCLATURE DG units, the stability of the individual DG units themselves
must to be improved to ensure their continuous and reliable
𝑃𝑖𝑛 Virtual shaft power operation to provide effective support to the stability of the
𝑃𝑜𝑢𝑡 Measured output active power entire grid [1].
𝑃0∗ Reference value of active power Another issue that should be mentioned is the inverter-
𝜔𝑚 Virtual rotor angular frequency interfaced DG systems function related to their operation in
𝜔𝑔𝑟𝑖𝑑 Measured PCC angular frequency microgrids. In order to improve the system operation with DG,
𝜔0∗ Nominal angular frequency the microgrid concept has been proposed [2]. A microgrid is
∗
𝑉𝑜𝑢𝑡 Reference value for voltage control basically a subsystem composed by inverter-interfaced,
conventional or both generation, and loads connected to a
𝑉0∗ Reference rated voltage
∗ point of common coupling (PCC) that may operate in island
𝑄𝑜𝑢𝑡 Reference value of reactive power
or grid connected mode. Although control schemes for
𝑄𝑜𝑢𝑡 Measured output reactive power
inverters have been developed to operate in each connection
𝑄0∗ Reference value of reactive power
mode as grid feeding or grid forming, the grid supporting
𝑉𝑜𝑢𝑡 Measured inverter output voltage
operation type is another challenge. The active and reactive
𝐼𝑜𝑢𝑡 Measured inverter output current
power regulation keeping voltage and frequency around the
𝑉𝑃𝐶𝐶 Measured PCC voltage
nominal values in island, grid connected and transitions modes
𝑉𝑃𝑊𝑀 Switching PWM signals using a unique and “communication-less” control strategy is
𝜃0 PCC voltage phase angle an actual issue that deserve special attention. Some control
𝐽 Virtual inertia techniques like master-slave and droop laws based have been
𝐷 Damping factor proposed [3] to solution this issue, but any of those reaching
𝑘𝑝 𝜔 − 𝑃 Droop coefficient an optimal operation without to decrease the system inertia.
𝑘𝑞 𝑉 − 𝑄 Droop coefficient The traditional synchronous machines based generation
systems add inertia into the power system due to their stored
I. INTRODUCTION energy in the rotor's machines. With the idea of adding inertia
to the inverter-interfaced generation systems, the concept of
Global tendencies in power systems around the world have Virtual Synchronous Generator (VSG) has been developed
shown in the last decades a permanent demand growth. during the last decade [4-14]. Some approaches of inverter
Technology to reach this new demand have evolved hand by control strategies VSG based were implemented like VISMA
hand with the renewable energy sources development. To [6], Synchronverters [7], and VSG [8].
ensure a right integration with the new system's This paper presents a VSG based control scheme adaptation
configurations, areas like power electronics and control play a [9] cascaded with a voltage controller for three-phase
fundamental role and present big challenges for designers. inverters. A proposed application is in microgrid systems but
One of the challenges is to achieve a power systems with the possibility to be adapted to any inverter-interfaced
seamlessly integrated operation taking care about the system. The section II introduces a VSG concept review,

978-1-5090-6248-5/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE

afterward there is the system and control schemes detail
(section III), a small signal modeling (section IV), and finally,
simulation results are presented in section V.

II. VSG CONCEPT

The idea of the VSG is initially based on reproducing the

dynamic properties of a real synchronous generator (SG) for
the inverter-interfaced DG units, aiming to include the
advantages of a SG on stability enhancement [8]. The
principle of the VSG can be applied either to a single DG or
to a group of DGs. The first application may be more
appropriate to individual owners of DGs, whereas the second
application is more economical and easier to control from the
grid operator point of view [5]. The dynamic properties of a Fig. 1. Inverter-interfaced DC source: General topology scheme
SG provide the possibility of adjusting active and reactive
power, dependency of the grid frequency on the rotor speed, The power circuit including voltage and current
and highlighting the rotating mass and damping windings measurements details is shown in Fig. 2. This configuration
effect as well as stable operation with a high parallelism level represents a basic microgrid with DG very close to loads
[12]. (𝑍𝑙𝑜𝑎𝑑 ) and grid connection possibility. It is considered after
The VSG is usually located between a DC bus/source/DG the inverter a connection to PCC through a LCL output filter
and the grid and shows the DC source to the grid as a SG in and grid impedance (𝑍𝑔𝑟𝑖𝑑 ) is taken into account as
viewpoint of inertia and damping property. Actually, the predominantly resistive emulating a weak grid connection.
virtual inertia is emulated in the system by controlling the
active power through the inverter in inverse proportion of the
rotor speed. Aside from higher frequency noise due to
switching of inverter’s power transistors [13], there is no
difference between the electrical appearance of an
electromechanical SG and electrical VSG, from the grid point
of view.
The output active power of a VSG unit can be simply
described following the SG’s swing equation (1):
Fig. 2. Three-phase inverter circuit with current and voltage
𝑃𝑖𝑛 − 𝑃𝑜𝑢𝑡 = 𝐽𝜔𝑚
𝑑𝜔𝑚
+ 𝐷(𝜔𝑚 − 𝜔𝑔𝑟𝑖𝑑 ) (1) measurements
𝑑𝑡

The VSG controller block is shown in Fig. 3.

The key idea of the VSG control is to emulate the swing
Frequency 𝜔0∗ , RMS voltage 𝑉0∗ , active power 𝑃0∗ , reactive
equation, where 𝜔𝑔𝑟𝑖𝑑 is the nominal frequency of the grid.
power 𝑄0∗ , every aforementioned measurements are inputs
First term 𝑃𝑖𝑛 denotes the primary power that should be references for this controller. Using droop laws and solving
transferred to the inverter. Second term 𝑃𝑜𝑢𝑡 indicates that the swing equation is achieved a voltage reference (𝑉out ∗
)
power will be generated or absorbed by the VSG according to generation for an inverter operation as grid supporting source.
the positive or the negative initial rate of frequency 𝜔𝑚
change. J is the virtual inertia emulating characteristic and D
is the virtual damping factor that introduces the damp winding
function in a SG. To get a VSG dynamic response in an
inverter interfaced unit, this equation must be introduced and
solved by the control algorithm.

III. SYSTEM DESCRIPTION AND CONTROL SCHEMES

The basic system analyzed in this paper is presented in Fig.

1. The power circuit consider a DC source connected to a DC
link and interfaced to a PCC bus through a three phase inverter
(both together represent a DG). The PCC bus considers also a
load and a grid connection through a mainly resistive line. It
should be mentioned that DC source is considered as ideal and
the topology incorporate an LC filter at the inverter output
terminal. The control circuit is composed by a VSG based
digital controller cascaded with a voltage controller that Fig. 3. VSG based controller with active and reactive power tracking
generates high-frequency PWM signals for the inverter
switching.
 The ‘Power Calculation’ block uses currents and voltage
measurements to calculate the active and reactive output
power. After a coordinate’s transformation from ABC to αβ
using (2), expressions (3) and (4) are employed to estimate the
power values. The ‘PLL’ block uses a phase-locked-loop
algorithm to obtain the PCC frequency 𝜔𝑔𝑟𝑖𝑑 and the phase
angle 𝜃0 for the synchronization stage.
The ‘Voltage Controller’ block corresponds to the voltage
loop presented in Fig. 6. This closed-loop incorporates a PID
∗
controller 𝐶𝑣 that tracks the 𝑉𝑜𝑢𝑡 generated by the VSG
Controller and generates the PWM signals.

𝑣𝛼 2 1 − 1⁄2 − 1⁄2 𝑣𝐴
[𝑣 ] = √ [ ] [𝑣𝐵 ] (2)
𝛽 3 0 √3⁄ −√3⁄ 𝑣
2 2 𝐶

𝑃𝑜𝑢𝑡 = 𝑣𝑜𝑢𝑡_𝛼 𝑖𝑜𝑢𝑡_𝛼 + 𝑣𝑜𝑢𝑡_𝛽 𝑖𝑜𝑢𝑡_𝛽 (3)

Fig. 6. Voltage control loop
𝑄𝑜𝑢𝑡 = −𝑣𝑜𝑢𝑡_𝛼 𝑖𝑜𝑢𝑡_𝛽 + 𝑣𝑜𝑢𝑡_𝛽 𝑖𝑜𝑢𝑡_𝛼 (4)
𝐶𝑣 controller transfer-function is presented by equation (8). This one
The ‘ω-P droop’ block sets relation (5) between the angular includes the gain 𝑘𝑝𝑖𝑑 , zeros (𝑧𝑝𝑖𝑑1 , 𝑧𝑝𝑖𝑑2 ) and pole (𝑝𝑝𝑖𝑑 ) location.
frequency 𝜔𝑚 and the input active power reference 𝑃𝑖𝑛 that
depends of the droop coefficient 𝑘𝑝 as detailed in Fig. 4. Next, (𝑠 + 𝑧𝑝𝑖𝑑1 ) ∙ (𝑠 + 𝑧𝑝𝑖𝑑2 )
the swing equation is solved in the ‘VSG Algorithm’ block and 𝐶𝑣 (𝑠) = 𝑘𝑝𝑖𝑑 ∙ (8)
𝑠 ∙ (𝑠 + 𝑝𝑝𝑖𝑑 )
the angular virtual frequency 𝜔𝑚 is obtained. This one is the
inverter operation frequency.
IV. SMALL-SIGNAL MODEL

This section presents a parametric analysis that shows the

angular frequency response as a load power function. A small-
signal model for island mode operation is obtained, to analyse
the influence of the 𝑘𝑝 , J and D parameters on the dynamic
Fig. 4. ‘ω-P Droop’ block detail scheme
response.

A. Small-Signal Modeling
𝑃𝑖𝑛 = 𝑃0∗ − 𝑘𝑝 (𝜔𝑚 − 𝜔0 ) (5) Fig. 7. shows the modeling circuit considered. For this
analysis, the reactive power control loop is not considered and
∗ |
The ‘V-Q Droop’ block sets a relation between the RMS the |𝑉𝑜𝑢𝑡 value remains constant.
voltage value at the PCC and the reactive power reference
∗
𝑄𝑜𝑢𝑡 (Fig. 5). This relation (6) is adjusted in function of the
droop coefficient 𝑘𝑞 and the reference generated feeds a
closed-loop that controls the output reactive power through a
PI controller. A low-pass filter is added after the 𝑄𝑜𝑢𝑡
calculation to ensure an input without low-frequency
oscillations and eliminating the ripple.

Fig. 5. ‘V-Q Droop’ block detail scheme Fig. 7. Simplified circuit for small-signal modeling

∗
𝑄𝑜𝑢𝑡 = 𝑄0∗ − 𝑘𝑞 (𝑉𝑃𝐶𝐶_𝑟𝑚𝑠 − 𝑉0∗ ) (6) Neglecting power loss into inverter and LCL filter (𝑃𝑜𝑢𝑡 =
𝑃𝑙𝑜𝑎𝑑 ), the power flows out of the VSG 𝑆𝑜𝑢𝑡 can be expressed
∗ |
as:
The amplitude value |𝑉𝑜𝑢𝑡 obtained from the reactive loop
is used together with the virtual frequency ω𝑚 , and the PPC 𝑉𝑜𝑢𝑡 ∙ 𝑉𝑝𝑐𝑐 ∙ 𝑠𝑖𝑛𝛿 𝑉𝑜𝑢𝑡 ∙ (𝑉𝑜𝑢𝑡 − 𝑉𝑝𝑐𝑐 𝑐𝑜𝑠𝛿)
voltage phase angle 𝜃0 to generate the 𝑉𝑜𝑢𝑡 ∗
signal in the 𝑆𝑜𝑢𝑡 =
𝑋𝑠
+𝑗
𝑋𝑠
(9)
‘Reference Generation’ block. This block solves the equation
(7)
Where the real part represents the load active power. Using
∗ ∗ |
this expression and the equations (1) and (5) is applied a small-
𝑉𝑜𝑢𝑡 = |𝑉𝑜𝑢𝑡 ∙ 𝑠𝑖𝑛(𝜔𝑚 t + 𝜃0 ) (7) signal perturbation to deduce the small-signal relation of Δω𝑚
as a Δ𝑃𝑙𝑜𝑎𝑑 function (10). This relation represents the ‘ω-P Fig. 11 shows the virtual frequency step response for
droop’ and ‘VSG Algorithm’ blocks as a simplified transfer models with different 𝑘𝑝 values. With this parametric
function. variation, the steady-state value changes following the droop
relation and also changes the stabilization time. In Fig. 12
1 + 𝐾𝐷 𝑠 virtual inertia 𝐽 parameter variation is presented keeping
𝛥𝜔𝑚
=−
𝑑𝑔
(10) constant 𝑘𝑝 . Noteworthy that steady-state value remains
𝛥𝑃𝑙𝑜𝑎𝑑 𝑘𝑝 + 𝐽𝜔0 𝑠 constant for all frequency responses. In this case the main
variation identified is related with the stabilization time. It is
Where the 𝐾𝑑𝑔 value is: concluded that steady-state value depends principally on 𝑘𝑝
𝑉𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑉𝑝𝑐𝑐 ∙ 𝑐𝑜𝑠𝛿 value.
𝐾𝑑𝑔 = (11)
𝑋𝑓

B. Small-Signal Model System

To validate and analyze the obtained model, simulations
replacing the ‘ω-P droop’ and the ‘VSG Algorithm’ blocks by
the transfer function model were done and compared with the
step responses of the system using the VSG control based
scheme presented in III, only considering the active power
∗ |
loop (|𝑉𝑜𝑢𝑡 constant). The ‘VSG Controller’ block
considering its small-signal model is presented in Fig. 8.

Fig. 11. Model (*) and VSG Algorithm (-) step response to a load
variation for different 𝑘𝑝 values

Fig. 8. ‘VSG Controller’ block for small signal model validation

V. SIMULATION RESULTS

To validate the VSG based control scheme studied in

previous sections, simulation results were obtained employing
software PSIM Professional and Table I parameters. Small-
signal model validation, active and reactive power reference
tracking and load variations are discussed in this section.

TABLE I
Simulation Parameters
Parameter Value Parameter Value
VDC 400 V kp 500 p.u
Fig. 12. Model (*) and VSG Algorithm (-) step response to a load
Sload 10 kVA kq 1 p.u
variation for different 𝐽 values
V0* 220 V fsw 20 kHz
ω0* 376.99 rad/s Kpi 0.0004
Lf 560 μH Ppi 6285
Cf 50 μF PI Bandwith 20 Hz
Ls 560 μH PI Phase Margin 46°
Rgrid 0.685 Ω Kpid 1420
Lgrid 1.82 mH Zpid1-2 6580
J 4S Ppid 502000
D 15 p.u PID Bandwith 5 kHz
PID Phase Margin 82°

A. Small-Signal Model Validation

Fig. 11-13 exhibit the simulation results obtained to
validate the theoretical model presented in section IV. The
angular frequency 𝜔𝑚 response matches with the small signal
model analysis, however a small error between the responses Fig. 13. Model (*) and VSG Algorithm (-) active power variation at
was detected due to the arithmetic algorithm’s convergence. load
B. Reference Step Response
To observe the power reference tracking function,
simulation results are presented in Fig. 14-17. Simulation
events are listed in Table II. This simulation consider the full
scheme presented in section III for grid connected mode
operation.
TABLE II
Simulation Events
Time Power Reference VSG State
0 - 0.1 - Disconnected
0.1 – 1 P0+Q0 P and Q Feeding
P - Absorption
1–2 -P0+Q0
Q - Feeding
2–3 -P0-Q0 P and Q – Absorption
P - Feeding
3–4 P0-Q0
Q - Absorption
Fig. 16. Normalized PCC voltage reference step response for grid
Whenever the active or reactive power is positive indicates connected mode operation
a power flux from DC link to PCC through the inverter. For
other hand, if the power is negative the DC source must absorb
it from the AC grid. The results show that VSG based control
scheme operate successfully in grid connected mode, however
it is noticed a small steady-state error in the power tracking
reference.

Fig. 17. Normalized virtual frequency reference step response for

grid connected mode operation

C. Load Step Response

Fig. 14. Normalized active output power (black line) reference step
response and active power reference (discontinuous blue line) for
grid connected mode operation
Finally, a load power variation test is done. On this test power
references values do not change. Power, frequency and
voltage responses are presented in Fig. 18-21. Is remarkable
that VSG frequency 𝜔𝑚 remains almost constant during the
test. This is due to the fact that in grid connection mode,
additional load power is supplied by the grid.

Fig. 15. Normalized reactive output power (black line) reference step Fig. 18. Normalized active output power (black line), active load
response and reactive power reference (discontinuous blue line) for power (blue line) and reactive power reference (red line) load step
grid connected mode operation response for grid connected operation mode

Fig. 19. Normalized reactive output power (black line), reactive load
power (blue line) and reactive power reference (red line) load step
response for grid connected operation mode
Fig. 20. Normalized PCC voltage load step response for grid
connected operation mode
Fig. 21. Normalized virtual frequency load step response for grid
connected operation mode
VII. CONCLUSIONS
A VSG based control strategy for a three-phase inverter-
interfaced DC source has been studied and analyzed. Active
and reactive power reference tracking simulation results were
presented and step load responses were analyzed. Also, a
small-signal model for island connected mode was verified.
Power reference tracking test have showed a successfully four
quadrant operation allowing active and reactive power
absorption and feeding. Load variation test gives a
performance result that confirm a similar behavior with
synchronous generators. Is highlighted that stabilization time
for reference tracking and load variations was 300 ms, a value
much bigger than for droop based schemes without VSG
algorithm implementations.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This research have been supported by the Coordenação de
Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nivel Superior (CAPES), the
FAPESC and FITEJ foundations, the National Counsel of
Technological and Scientific Development (CNPq) and the
Academic National Cooperation Program (PROCAD).
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