Synchronous power controller for distributed generation units

Abstract

Renewable energies has shown to be a promising solution to improve the energy injected to the electrical network. However, the lack of inertia in such systems have proven to affect the grid stability, as those technologies operate as current controlled sources they not provide grid support functionalities. This issue has fostered the implementation of new control strategies to enable power plants to provide a coordinated action to support some inertia and damping into the system. Synchronous controllers have proven to be an excellent option for distributed renewable generation, which allows to emulate the inertia of a synchronous generators, having a better interaction between the power converter and the electrical grid. However, the implementation of such control strategies require power converter to be smarter and include advanced control algorithms. In this paper, a new control strategy to control different distributed generation units to have a coordinated action in front of the electrical grid is presented, reducing the cost of the power converter by extracting the synchronous control from the internal controller and replacing in by a central synchronous controller.