A Power Hardware-in-the-Loop Based Method for FAPR Compliance Testing of the Wind Turbine Converters Control

Abstract

A task for new power generation technologies, interfaced to the electrical grid by power electronic converters, is to stiffen the rate of change of frequency (RoCoF) at the initial few milliseconds (ms) after any variation of active power balance. This task is defined in this article as fast active power regulation (FAPR), a generic definition of the FAPR is also proposed in this study. Converters equipped with FAPR controls should be tested in laboratory conditions before employment in the actual power system. This paper presents a power hardware-in-the-loop (PHIL) based method for FAPR compliance testing of the wind turbine converter controls. The presented PHIL setup is a generic test setup for the testing of all kinds of control strategies of the grid-connected power electronic converters. Firstly, a generic PHIL testing methodology is presented. Later on, a combined droop- anFd derivative-based FAPR control has been implemented and tested on the proposed PHIL setup for FAPR compliance criteria of the wind turbine converters. The compliance criteria for the FAPR of the wind turbine converter controls have been framed based on the literature survey. Improvement in the RoCoF and and maximum underfrequency deviation (NADIR) has been observed if the wind turbine converter controls abide by the FAPR compliance criteria.

Power Hardware-in-the-Loop-Based Performance Analysis of Different Converter Controllers for Fast Active Power Regulation in Low-Inertia Power Systems

“…Any power electronic-interfaced device (e.g., a type-IV wind turbine (WT)) can be partly modeled within RTDS, whereas the power electronic converter to be investigated (e.g., the grid side converter) is a physical device that interfaces to the RTDS through a special communication scheme based on the Aurora protocol. Unlike existing PHIL setups for the study of other control functions (e.g., voltage regulation), the proposed scheme enables a versatile and stable PHIL setup, and also allows for an easy implementation of any user-defined FAPR in a so-called a real-time target processor [28][29][30][31][32]. This allows for the evaluation of the feasibility and effectiveness of FAPR when acting on a real/mockup converter.…”

“…In addition to the useful information that the proposed PHIL setup provides regarding the performance of FAPR strategies, it also decreases the period of simulation development (i.e., low latency, in the order of a few ms), prevents simulation inaccuracy, and decreases the risk of practical implementation (e.g., there is no need for interfacing through analogue/digital cards). These are among the major research challenges in the development of PHIL, as acknowledged in [27][28][29][33][34][35].…”

Experimental Determination of Parameters of Nonlinear Electrical Load

“…In modern industrial power supply systems, there has been a significant increase in the installed capacity of nonlinear electric loads, for example, a lot of nonlinear load types are used in the mining industry [1] and railway traction power systems [2], and arc furnaces are powered by rectifiers [3]. Renewable energy sources must be provided with semiconductor devices [4,5]. At the same time, measures to minimize the electromagnetic interference that such power supply systems generate are not being widely implemented.…”

Hardware-in-the-Loop and Digital Control Techniques Applied to Single-Phase PFC Converters

“…However, these techniques have long simulation times and their development is complex [7]. Alternatively, Hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) is a technique for performing system-level testing of embedded systems in a comprehensive, cost-effective [8,9], and repeatable manner [10].…”