Active Damping of Power Oscillations Following Frequency Changes in Low Inertia Power Systems

TL;DR

This paper investigates active damping methods for power oscillations in low inertia power systems, focusing on the effectiveness of voltage regulators and Power System Stabilizers during frequency transients, using analytical and simulation approaches.

Contribution

It introduces an analytical framework and simulation validation for active damping of oscillations in low inertia grids, emphasizing the role of PSS and voltage regulation.

Findings

Power System Stabilizer effectively damps oscillations during frequency changes.

Analytical solutions match simulation results for transient responses.

Voltage regulator tuning improves grid stability in low inertia conditions.

Abstract

The absolute requirement to increase the amount of energy generation from renewable sources e.g. predominantly asynchronously connected wind turbines and photovoltaic installations, may in practice during transient events (where frequency changes are examined) excite oscillatory response of the power output of large grid connected synchronous-generators. The response of such generators must be controlled either by varying the applied torque of a turbine or by altering the electromagnetic torque in the airgap. Choosing the latter, the adequacy of a voltage regulator, particularly that of the embedded Power System Stabilizer (PSS) circuit, is investigated using the IEEE PSS1A model for the automatic voltage regulator of a synchronous generator driven by a gas turbine. The response is obtained via closed form analytic solutions for both small (linear) and large (nonlinear) scale transient events in the energy grid system. In tandem with the analytical study, the behavior simulated with a computer model from MatLab-SimPowerSystems is reviewed.