Active and reactive power strategies with peak current limitation for distributed generation inverters during unbalanced grid faults

Abstract

Distributed generation inverters have become a key element to improve grid efficiency and reliability, particularly during grid faults. Under these severe perturbations, inverter-based power sources should accomplish low-voltage ride-through requirements in order to keep feeding the grid and support the grid voltage. Also, rated current can be required to better utilize reactive power provisions. This paper presents a reference generator capable to accomplish these two objectives: to keep the injected currents within safety values and to compute the power references for a better utilization of the inverter power capacity. The reference generator is fully flexible since positive and negative active and reactive powers can be simultaneously injected to improve ride-through services. Selected experimental results are reported to evaluate the performance of the proposed reference generator under different control strategies.