Grid-forming power converter controller with artificial intelligence to attenuate inter-area modes

Abstract

Renewable energy and battery energy storage systems are affecting the dynamics of power systems mainly due to the interconnection through power electronics with the electric grid. Specifically, the low inertia characterizing these systems impact’s the overall rotor angle stability of the power electronics dominated power systems. Hitherto, power system stabilizers are the common approach to mitigate electromechanical oscillations, which their parameters are tuned rarely resulting to sub-optimal performance against the changing conditions. In this paper, intelligent power oscillation damper (iPOD) is proposed for grid-forming power converters to attenuate sub-synchronous oscillations. The iPOD is tuned to the inter-area modes in realtime through an ensemble AI model based on Decision Trees called Random Forests. The proposed control scheme is verified using the two area system considering symmetrical faults as well as network variations. In addition, the damping capabilities of the proposed scheme are compared with the damping of the power system stabilizer installed in each generator.