Search Results (29)

A split-phase three-level LCL grid-connected inverter is proposed to match the single-phase three-wire split-phase output power grids in countries such as those in North America. However, influencing factors such as grid impedance and background harmonics in non-ideal power grids may lead to distortion and even instability of the output waveform of the grid-connected inverter. To address the aforementioned issues, through a stability analysis of the dual-feedback system of inverter-side current control and capacitor current active damping, a composite active damping strategy is put forward to enhance the stability of the LCL grid-connected inverter. This composite active damping strategy encompasses a standardized method for designing the robust capacitor current feedback coefficient and a method of embedding leading-phase correction to improve system stability. The strategy proposed in this paper is more streamlined and standardized when calculating the capacitor current feedback coefficient, enabling the system to operate stably under a wide range of grid impedance variations. Moreover, an analysis of the mechanism by which grid background harmonics affect the grid-connected current waveform is conducted, and the PR controller is replaced with a multiple proportional-resonant (MPR) controller. The MPR controller can achieve infinite gain at specific harmonics, thereby suppressing specific low-order harmonics in the grid and reducing the total harmonic distortion (THD) of the grid-connected current. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy is verified on a 12 kW experimental platform. The results indicate that, compared with the inverter-side current feedback active damping (ICFAD) method, the composite active damping strategy proposed in this paper exhibits stronger robustness, and the added MPR controller significantly enhances the anti-interference ability of the grid-connected inverter against grid harmonics. Full article

When a multi-inverter grid-connected system is influenced by the parasitic parameters of LCL-type inverters and the impedance of the connected system’s lines, its resonance characteristics become more complex and difficult to predict. For LCL-type multi-inverter grid-connected systems, a mathematical model that considers the effects of parasitic parameters and line impedance has been established, leading to the derivation of the system’s Norton equivalent circuit and a general expression for the inverter output current. The resonance characteristics of multi-inverter grid-connected systems composed of inverters with the same and different parameters were analyzed under the influence of parasitic parameters and line impedance. To suppress the resonance in multi-inverter grid-connected systems and address the issue of traditional PI control not meeting grid requirements for LCL-type grid-connected inverters, a strategy combining superhelical sliding mode control with active damping was adopted. To verify the practical performance of the adopted resonance suppression strategy in complex environments, a grid-connected system model containing two LCL-type inverters was constructed using the MATLAB/Simulink software platform, followed by simulation analysis. The simulation results strongly confirm the feasibility and effectiveness of the adopted resonance suppression strategy, considering the effects of parasitic parameters and line impedance. This strategy demonstrates significant suppression effects in addressing resonance issues caused by parasitic parameters and line impedance, effectively enhancing the quality of grid-connected electrical energy. Full article

The negative high-pass filter feedback of the grid current (NFGCF) can offer active damping for the LCL-type grid-connected inverter. Due to the control delay in digital control systems, this damping can cause the system to exhibit non-minimum phase behavior within specific frequency ranges. This study proposes a joint active damping approach that combines grid current feedback and the point of common coupling (PCC) voltage unit feedforward. The proposed method introduces a dynamic damping region that varies with grid impedance. By developing suitable damping loop control parameters, this region can span the entire frequency range, even exceeding the Nyquist frequency f_s/2. The research results demonstrate that the proposed approach enhances robustness against variations in grid impedance and eliminates non-minimum phase behavior. Simulation and experimental outcomes validate the effectiveness of this joint active damping method. Full article

To address the issues of high computational load and slow dynamic performance in traditional fractional-order sliding mode control for LCL-type grid-connected inverters, this paper proposes a fixed-time robust fractional-order sliding mode control strategy based on weighted average current control. Firstly, the weighted average current control (WACC) is used to reduce the third-order LCL filter to the first order, which simplifies the system model; secondly, in order to suppress the disturbance caused by the filter parameter perturbation to the weighted average current accuracy, a fixed-time disturbance observer (FTDO) is used to quickly estimate the disturbance caused by the filter parameter perturbation in a fixed time, so as to improve the anti-interference ability of the system; moreover, a fixed-time fractional-order sliding mode controller (FTFOSMC) is designed to achieve rapid tracking of the incoming reference current, and the stability of the proposed control strategy is confirmed by the strict Lyapunov method, which proves that the upper bound of the stability time is independent of the initial state of the system. Finally, simulation and experimental results show that the proposed method has better steady-state performance and a higher dynamic performance. Full article

In this paper, the implementation of sliding mode control algorithms for the case of power grid current regulation in a T-type bidirectional inverter system connected via an LCL filter to the power grid is proposed and presented. A mathematical model of such a system has been proposed, which was then implemented in a simulation environment. The method of designing sliding controllers using the Lyapunov method to conduct a stability proof is presented. The article includes a comparative analysis of two sliding mode control algorithms: the classic one, which includes equivalent control, discontinuous part, and proportional reaching law, and the hybrid one, in which the discontinuous part and reaching law were modified. Full article

This paper presents a current control design for stabilizing an inductive-capacitive-inductive (LCL)-filtered grid-connected inverter (GCI) system under uncertain grid impedance and distorted grid environment. To deal with the negative impact of grid impedance, LC-type grid impedance is considered in both the system model derivation and controller design process of an LCL-filtered GCI system. In addition, the integral and resonant control terms are also augmented into the system model in the synchronous reference frame to guarantee the reference tracking of zero steady-state error and good harmonic disturbance compensation of the grid-injected currents from GCI. By considering the effect of grid impedance on the control design process, an incomplete state feedback controller will be designed based on the linear-quadratic regulator (LQR) without damaging the asymptotic stabilization and robustness of the GCI system under uncertain grid impedance. By means of the closed-loop pole map evaluation, the asymptotic stability, robustness, and resonance-damping capability of the proposed current control scheme are confirmed even when all the system states are not available. In order to reduce the number of required sensors for the realization of the controller, a discrete-time current-type full-state observer is employed in this paper to estimate the system state variables with high precision. The feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed control scheme are demonstrated by the PSIM simulations and experiments by using a three-phase GCI prototype system under adverse grid conditions. The comprehensive evaluation results show that the designed control scheme maintains the stability and robustness of the LCL-filtered GCI when connecting to unexpected grids, such as harmonic distortion and L-type and LC-type grid impedances. As a result, the proposed control scheme successfully stabilizes the entire GCI system with high-quality grid-injected currents even when the GCI faces severe grid distortions and an extra grid dynamic caused by the L-type or LC-type grid impedance. Furthermore, low-order distortion harmonics come from the background grid voltages and are maintained as acceptable limits according to the IEEE Std. 1547-2003. Comparative test result with the conventional one also confirms the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme under LC-type grid impedance thanks to the consideration of LC grid impedance in the design process. Full article

In photovoltaic grid-connected systems, the interaction between grid-connected inverters and the grid may cause harmonic oscillation, which severely affects the normal operation of the system. To improve the quality of the output electrical energy, photovoltaic grid-connected systems often use LCL filters as output filters to filter out high-frequency harmonics. Taking the three-phase LCL-type photovoltaic grid-connected inverter system as an example, this paper addresses the issue of harmonic resonance. Firstly, based on the harmonic linearization method and considering the impact of the coupling compensation term on the grid-side voltage, a modular positive and negative sequence impedance modeling method is proposed, which simplifies the secondary modeling process of the converter under feedback control. Then, the stability analysis is conducted using the Nyquist criterion, revealing the mechanism of high-frequency resonance in photovoltaic grid-connected systems. Furthermore, this paper delves into the impact of changes in system parameters on impedance characteristics and system stability. The results indicate that the proportional coefficient of the internal loop current controller has a significant influence on system impedance characteristics. Additionally, this paper proposes an active damping design method that combines lead correction and capacitor current feedback to impedance-reconstruct the easily oscillating frequency band. Finally, the effectiveness of this method is verified in the simulation platform. Simulation results confirm the effectiveness of this method in suppressing harmonic resonance while maintaining rapid dynamic response. Full article

A grid-connected inverter (GCI) with LCL filters is widely used in photovoltaic grid-connected systems. While introducing active damping methods can improve the quality of grid-connected current (GCC), the influence of grid voltage disturbances can still significantly impact the quality of GCC, leading to stability degradation, especially in weak grid conditions. This paper proposes a grid-voltage-weighted feedforward control scheme based on the quasi-proportional resonance (QPR) controller. This scheme introduces compensatory terms with different proportional coefficients in the voltage feedforward, controlled by the QPR controller. Through a series of analyses, reasonable inverter parameters are first designed. Then, the proposed system model is built in Matlab Simulink. Through simulation experiments and comparisons with various types of operating conditions, the effectiveness of the proposed system scheme is validated. It minimizes the impact of grid voltage disturbances, suppresses the influence of grid harmonics on the control system, improves current quality, and enhances the stability of the GCI system. Full article

Novel energy generation technologies, such as high-permeability wind power and photovoltaic systems, exhibit inherent intermittency, randomness, and volatility. During periods of energy production from these sources, the impedance of the electrical grid frequently experiences significant fluctuations. Consequently, the grid manifests characteristics akin to a weak grid, highlighting the challenges associated with integrating renewable energy sources with variable output profiles. These fluctuations lead to a shift in resonance spikes of the LCL-type filter towards the lower frequency band, consequently impacting the stability of inverter grid connections. To mitigate this issue, the present study introduces a novel approach integrating the D-split method and a proportional–differential feedforward strategy. This combination aims to reshape the inverter’s output impedance, ensuring its consistent stability even amidst significant fluctuations in grid impedance. In this research, the optimal controller parameters for systems operating under robust grid conditions are initially determined. This selection process involves the application of the D-split method, supported by graphical visualization. Additionally, the amplitude and phase angle margin tester is employed while considering the system bandwidth as a limiting constraint. Moreover, accounting for the influence of grid impedance, the D-split method is reapplied to ascertain the most suitable values for the proportional–differential feedforward parameters. This adjustment aims to enhance the adaptability of the grid-connected inverter specifically in scenarios characterized by a weak grid. The hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation results demonstrate that despite the presence of harmonics within the grid and a short circuit impedance ratio (SCR) of 3, the inverter maintains grid stability and effectively suppresses harmonics. Moreover, the total harmonic distortion factor (THD) of the grid-connected current remains below 5%. Full article

Using a low pulse ratio, the electromagnetic interference and switching loss of an inverter can be effectively reduced, particularly in high-power applications. However, due to variations in grid impedance, it is a challenging task to achieve stable operation of an LCL-type grid-connected inverter (GCI) using the active damping method with low pulse ratio. Thus, a novel three-phase dual-frequency GCI is presented to ensure the symmetry of the output power and the stable operation of the system address stability issues. The proposed inverter topology in this article is composed of two inverters in parallel, which are, respectively, a power inverter unit (PIU) and an auxiliary harmonic elimination unit (AHEU). To reduce the switching loss and improve the inverter efficiency, the switching frequency of the PIU is relatively low, injecting current into the grid. Moreover, the feedforward compensation method is used in AHEU. AHEU operates at high switching frequency to generate a current component that is symmetrical with the ripple com-ponent, improving the power quality, without extracting the current harmonic as the current reference. The operating principle of feedforward compensation is explained, and a proper parameter design procedure is presented in this paper. Since L filters are used for the proposed inverter, the system can operate stably where the ratio of switching frequency to fundamental frequency is low. A 10 kW laboratory prototype was built. The experimental results showed that the grid current ripple could be effectively eliminated and the THD of the grid current was 3.01%. The proposed inverter has good stability in a weak grid, and the efficiency of the proposed inverter is 95.98% at rated current, which is 0.81% higher than the traditional GCI, effectively increasing the efficiency of the system. Full article

The conventional inverter-side current single-loop feedback control scheme is weak in suppressing the grid-side current harmonics, posing a challenge for an inverter to inject high-quality current under distorted grid voltage. With capacitor current compensation added, the control scheme achieves controllability of the grid-side current harmonics so that it can effectively suppress some specific harmonic components. However, due to the stability requirements, only a few low-order harmonic resonance controllers can be applied, which limits the mitigation of high-order harmonics. To tackle this problem, the grid-side current feedback control with inductor–capacitor–inductor (LCL) resonance damping is proposed in this paper. In this case, a higher LCL resonance frequency can be set compared to the inverter-side current single-loop feedback control scheme. Thereby, more resonance controllers can be applied to suppress high-order grid-side current harmonics. The active damping method of capacitor current proportional feedback plus capacitor voltage proportional feedback is adopted because of its high robustness to grid impedance variations. Furthermore, this paper reveals that the applied active damping method has a limitation in that it only considers a single inverter under inductive grid impedance, which cannot eliminate the risk of resonance caused by the interaction of multiple inverters and the grid. To address this issue, a phase lead compensator (PLC) is proposed, eliminating the resonance risk by removing the non-passive region of the inverter output admittance. To retain the advantage of the inverter-side current single-loop feedback control scheme, i.e., only a few measuring devices are required, a digital differentiator is used to calculate the capacitor current from the capacitor voltage. The difference between the measured inverter-side current and the calculated capacitor current is taken to approximate the grid-side current for the feedback control. The control performance is comparable to using the grid-side current for feedback. Simulation and experimental results demonstrate that the proposed control scheme endows the inverter with good stability and current quality without extra measurement devices. Full article

In distributed generation systems, the inverter is the main power interface and its stability directly determines the reliable operation of the grid-connected system. As a typical topology for a three-phase four-wire inverter, the LCL-type three-phase four-wire split capacitor inverter (LCL-TFSCI) is taken as the research subject of this paper. Compared with the three-phase three-wire inverter, there is an additional zero-sequence path in the LCL-TFSCI. Therefore, it is not only necessary to consider the stability of the positive and negative sequence system, but there is also the need to consider the stability of the zero-sequence system when performing stability analysis for the LCL-TFSCI. In this paper, a small-signal impedance model considering the zero-sequence loop of LCL-TFSCI is firstly established. Subsequently, the instability risk is revealed when LCL-TFSCI is connected to the grid with parallel compensation capacitors. Through instability analysis, an impedance-reshaping method based on the complex filter and combined differential elements is proposed, which can reshape the impedance characteristic of LCL-TFSCI within the wide frequency range and expand the stability domain of the grid-connected system. Finally, the proposed method is verified by simulation and experiment. Full article

In the process of grid connection of an LCL inverter, sudden changes in load, high harmonics of the grid voltage, sudden changes in power, and other disturbances often occur. These will cause sharp degradation of the grid-connected power quality, so this paper proposes a new solution to the problem of how to reduce and eliminate disturbances in power quality by using a first-order linear active disturbance rejection control (LADRC) strategy with precise compensation via splitting the total disturbance term. An improved overall direct compensation method for total disturbance was proposed. The use of a subdivision compensation term could avoid the misjudgment arising from the estimation of the overall perturbation by the linear expanded state observer (LESO) within the first few weeks of the feedback when the overall compensation was applied. It aimed to reduce the overshooting caused by the overcompensation of the estimated disturbance term and to shorten the system convergence speed. Backstepping control was introduced to optimize the intermediate quantities of LADRC to estimate the error design outer-loop control law. The controlled quantity tracking the input quantity had excellent characteristics, and could set the desired error range quantity as the purpose of approximation. Therefore, backstepping control was suitable as a feedforward control of the system to preprocess the error in the estimated total disturbance of LESO and feed it into the inner loop improvement LADRC. Secondly, an improved control cascade PWM modulation with a PLL phase-locked loop to regulate the inverter output resulted in the elimination of the effects of internal and external disturbances on the grid-connected current and voltage. Finally, the amplitude–frequency characteristics were analyzed and compared for the trackability and antidisturbance of the improved linear active disturbance rejection controller, showing a good performance of the improved active disturbance rejection. At the same time, comparative simulations were conducted to confirm that the grid-connected current of the LCL inverter could obtain a better stability and grid entry quality in the first-order improved linear active disturbance rejection control. Full article

The integer-order LCL (IOLCL) filter has excellent high-frequency harmonic attenuation capability but suffers from resonance, which causes system instability in grid-connected inverter applications. This paper studied a class of resonance-free fractional-order LCL (FOLCL) filters and control problems of single-phase FOLCL-type grid-connected inverters (FOGCI). The Caputo fractional calculus operator was used to describe the fractional-order inductor and capacitor. Compared with the conventional IOLCL filter, by reasonably selecting the orders of the inductor and capacitor, the resonance peak of the FOLCL filter could be effectively avoided. In this way, the FOGCI could operate stably without passive or active dampers, which simplified the design of control system. Furthermore, compared with a single-phase integer-order grid-connected inverter (IOGCI) controlled by an integer-order PI (IOPI) controller, the FOGCI, combined with a fractional-order PI (FOPI) controller, could achieve greater gain and phase margins, which improved the system performance. The correctness of the theoretical analyses was validated through both simulation and hardware-in-the-loop experiments. Full article

To guarantee a system stability and reliable operation of an inductor-capacitor-inductor (LCL)-filtered grid-connected inverter (GCI) under unexpected grid and system uncertainties, a linear matrix inequality (LMI)-based model predictive control (MPC) is presented in this paper. Even though the conventional MPC scheme is constructed by a simple concept, it is difficult to determine an optimized weighting matrix of the MPC cost function against parameter discrepancies. To overcome this problem, the MPC scheme is combined with LMI-based optimization. The system states are estimated by the LMI-based current-type observer in the stationary reference frame to implement the proposed scheme. Additionally, the MPC scheme is combined with the disturbance observer to eliminate offset error, which improves the reference tracking performance. In comparison with the other studies, the proposed control method ensures high robust control performance under grid voltage imbalance, parameter uncertainty, and frequency variation. In addition, the proposed approach achieves a robust active damping even for the grid impedance variation without the need of considering further damping method. The control design step is systematic and straightforward. Furthermore, unlike the conventional schemes, the proposed controller does not require an integral term and the 2nd harmonic compensation term to obtain a good reference tracking performance under grid imbalanced condition, which contributes to the reduction of the controller complexity by decreasing the order of the controller model. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed LMI-based MPC control scheme, the simulation and experiments are carried out by using prototype three-phase GCI. The comprehensive simulation and experimental results clearly demonstrate the robustness of the proposed current controller under various adverse test conditions with unexpected grid and system uncertainties. Full article