Control Hardware-in-the-loop for Voltage Controlled Inverters with Unbalanced and Non-linear Loads in Stand-alone Photovoltaic(PV) Islanded Microgrids

TL;DR

This paper develops a hierarchical control scheme for PV inverters in microgrids to mitigate voltage unbalance and harmonic distortion caused by nonlinear and unbalanced loads, verified through real-time simulation and hardware-in-the-loop experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a novel hierarchical control approach combining primary control, voltage compensation, and a DC voltage regulator for improved power quality in microgrids.

Findings

Voltage distortion reduced from 6.38% to 1.91%.

Unbalanced and harmonic loads are shared proportionally among DG units.

Control scheme verified via real-time simulation and hardware-in-the-loop experiments.

Abstract

Unbalanced and nonlinear loads connected to microgrids (MG) with local distributed energy resources (DERs) are two of the leading causes of power quality problems. Nonlinearloads introduce voltage and current harmonics, and single-phase loads can cause voltage and current imbalances in a three-phase network. This paper presents a hierarchical control scheme for voltage-controlled photovoltaic (PV) inverters with unbalanced and nonlinear loads in micro-grids. The hierarchical control consists of primary control and voltage compensation control(VCC) and a DC voltage regulator (VR). The primary control scheme controls active and reactive power-sharing and the VCCregulates the unbalanced voltage and harmonics distortion. The effectiveness of the scheme is verified using Opal-RT real-time simulation and experimentally using control hardware-in-the-loop. The voltage distortion at the point of common coupling (PCC)decreased from 6.38 percent to 1.91 percent after compensation, while the unbalanced and harmonic loads are shared proportionally among the DG units.