The 6th International Power Electronics Drive Systems and Technologies Conference (PEDSTC2015)

3-4 February 2015, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran

Power and Voltage Control in a Grid-Connected

Microgrid System with a Back-to-Back Converter

H. Sekhavatmanesh, Student Member, H. Mokhtari, Member, IEEE, M. Hamzeh, Member, IEEE, and
IEEE,
A. Asbafkan
Department of Electrical Engineering, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran
h sekhavat@ee.sharif.edu, mokhtari@shari£edu, mo hamzeh@sbu.ac.ir, asbafkan@ee.shari£edu

Abstract-This paper proposes to use a back-to-back

converter as the interlink between a utility grid and a microgrid.
To justify this proposal, two modes of operation are explained
and the benefits of the back-to-back converter over conventional
static switches are shown. In mode-I, the inter-link converter
injects prespecified amounts of active and reactive power to the
microgrid. This mode is identified as PQ control mode. Mode-2 is
the voltage control mode in which, the back to back converter Fig. I. Power circuit of the back to back converter
controls the voltage of the microgrid and maintains the power
quality of the current drawn from the utility grid in spite of non­
linear and unbalanced loads in the microgrid.
In this paper, the microgrid is intended to work in two
different modes with the b-to-b converter. In mode-I, the
Krywords-microgrid; back-to-back; inter-link converter;
active and reactive power flow from the utility to the
voltage control mode; PQ control mode microgrid is controlled. In this mode, the grid has no
contribution to the voltage control of the microgrid and the
I. INTRODUCTION microgrid is seamed as a PQ load from the grid view. This
icrogrids have been introduced as alternatives to mode will be called as PQ control mode. This operation of
Mconventional centralized grids. These systems will contributing to the active/reactive power can only be achieved
play an important role in the future of smart grids. A by the use of a b-to-b converter. The other operation is when
Microgrid can usually operate either in grid-connected or the b-to-b converter works in mode-2, in which the voltage of
island mode. Electro-static switches are normally used to the microgrid is controlled with the interlink converter. In this
make an AC microgrid completely separated from the utility mode, the idea is to maintain the utility current in-phase with
in an island mode of operation. Therefore, the critical loads its voltage without any unbalances or harmonics, in the
can survive from the disturbances in frequency/voltage of the presence of nonlinear and unbalanced loads in the microgrid.
utility grid. In this condition, the utility grid has been lost as a This is one of the most important benefits of the proposed
stiff resource. interlink converter which will remove the necessity of using a
DG active filter and a power factor correction device.
The static switches can be replaced with an ac-dc-ac
converter. This back-to-back (b-to-b) converter as an interlink As shown in Fig. 1, the b-to-b converter is used with an
converter can offer the following benefits: LCL filter on both sides to attenuate the converter switching
ripples. In the stationary frame used in this paper, the
• Isolating the microgrid from the utility while keeping proportional resonant (PR) controller must be used for
the flow of power between them. tracking sinusoidal references. The PR controller is recently
used for several purposes such as, reactive power control in
• Removing the necessity of the resynchronization, when
island microgrid [8] and harmonic sharing in the microgrid
the microgrid is intended to reconnect to the utility [9]. In the next sections, the approaches used for designing the
grid.
control loops in the voltage and the PQ control modes, are
• Facilitating power flow control between the microgrid explained using the methods introduced in [3]. Several
and the utility. approaches have been used for parameter tuning of the muIti­
loop controllers in the literature, such as the iterative process
In recent years, the idea of using ac-dc-ac converter as the [4] and pole-zero cancellation [5]. In this paper, an iterative
interlink between microgrid and utility grid has been process will be introduced to tuning voltage and current muIti­
proposed, but its application limits to power flow control [1]. loop controllers. The remaining sections of this paper are
In this work, it is intended to extend this application to another organized as follows:
voltage control mode of operation. The b-to-b converter also
has been used to interlink two or more independent microgrids Section II discusses the power circuit structure, including
operating at different voltage and frequency [2]. electrical and physical characteristics of the utility grid, AC
microgrid, the LCL-filters and proposed interlink converter. In

978-1-4799-7653-9115/$31.00 ©2015 IEEE 468

 VSC2 Load

Fig. 2. Back to back converter operated in the PQ control mode (mode-I) or voltage control mode (mode-2)

section III, the control modes are introduced first, and then the the voltage of the AC microgid is set by its own resources and
design procedure of control loops for each mode is explained. the converter has no contribution to it. As shown in Fig. 2, in
Finally, in the section IV, the simulation results are provided. this mode, the b-to-b converter is controlled to inject or absorb
pre-specific amount of active and reactive power to or from
II. POWER CIRCUIT STRUCTURE the microgrid depending on the operator decisions. In another
Fig. 2 shows a schematic diagram of the system under control mode, the b-to-b converter controls the voltage of the
study. It consists of an active rectifier with an LCL filter, a microgrid or contributes to it in conjunction with the resources
DC-link capacitor and an inverter with another LCL filter. The in the microgrid.
parameters of the LCL-filters are determined according to As illustrated in Fig. 2, the control loop of the utility side
some factors such as current ripple, resonant frequency, the converter is unique in both modes of operation. In this
permissible reactive power injected by the filter capacitor, converter, a current controller is used in which the magnitude
voltage attenuation caused by the filter and passive and active and the phase of the current reference are determined
damping that must be added in series with the capacitor of the respectively, to control the DC-link voltage and to not draw
filter. any reactive power from the utility. However the microgrid
In this work, active damping is used and introduced as the side converter uses different control loops. In Mode-I, a
inner loop of the controllers. The configuration and parameters current controller is applied to inject the desired active and
of the filters of the rectifier and inverter used in the proposed reactive power to the microgrid but in Mode-2, a voltage
inter-link converter are the same. These parameters have been control loop is used to control the voltage of the microgrid
designed according to the characteristics of the power circuit system. The inner loop in both voltage and current control
and the aforementioned factors. The electrical characteristics loops is used for active damping and fast dynamic response.
of the power circuit and parameter values are listed in Table I. In this paper, the basic ABC frame is chosen for the
III. CONTROL SYSTEM STRUCTURE
controller strategy. In this frame, each phase can be controlled
separately, while it would still work properly in unbalanced
The b-to-b converter can be used in two different modes conditions. For better tracking and rejecting of sinusoidal
depending on the structure of the microgrid. In Mode-I, the signals resonant controllers are used. This controller has an
proposed inter-link converter is used in a condition in which infinite gain at a certain frequency called resonant frequency
TABLE I: Electrical and Physical Characteristics of the System
and almost zero gain at other frequencies. The theory beyond
this kind of controller is discussed in more details in [6]. To
Pnom
Nominal active power flow through the converter 100 kW avoid stability problems associated with an infinite gain at the
Line to line voltage of the microgrid and the utility 380 V
resonant frequency, some damping can be added to have a
Vgrid grid quasi-resonant integrator as follows:
Frequency of the microgrid and the utility grid. 50 Hz
.!net Ge ( S) =
2k/JJe s
(1)
Converter-side inductor 290 JiH 2 2 '
S + 2we s + Wo
4
grid-side inductor 1 70 pH where We is the resonant frequency.
L2
FiIter capacitance 76. 7JiF The controller gain is now finite but still relatively high to
Cf have a small steady state error. The controller bandwidth is
DC-link voltage 750 V widened by setting larger values for We. This could help the
Vdc controller work properly in spite of variations in the
DC-link capacitor 2. 7 mF
Cdc frequency. If the resonant integrator is accompanied by a
1 0 kHz
proportional term, the result will be a proportional resonant
Switching frequency
fS1" ( PR) controller as expressed in (2).

469
 Fig. 3. Modeling of an inverter operated as a voltage controller

50

iii'
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Gain=O.1 ..
..,
Damping: 0.7
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90
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Phase Margin:
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.s
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80�00=-L-- - -4-0LOO:-----20LOO----'-
60�00:-- 0 --...J
2000
Real Axis (seconds·1) FreQuencv (rad/s)
Fig. 4. Root locus of the open loop system in voltage control mode Fig. 5. Bode diagram of the open loop system with voltage controller
designed
2 es
Ge (s) = kp + 2 k/JJ 2' (2) Then, the value of Kp must be determined considering the
s +2wes+wO system dynamic performance. As depicted in Fig. 5, the root
where Kp is the proportional gain. locus of the system is optimized for the damping ratio of 0.7
As in the PI controller, the dynamic response of the system with the controller parameters of Ke=4 and Kp=O.l. In addition
such as bandwidth, phase and gain margins is dominantly to the resonant controller at the operating frequency, harmonic
tuned by Kp and the steady state behavior of the system can be resonant controllers must be added for the rejection of load
tuned by choosing an appropriate value for Ki• harmonic currents as given in (3).
5
A. Voltage Control Loop
" 2kih(hwc)S
Gc(s)=kp+ L. 2 + 2(hwc)s +(hw )2· (3)
k=O S O
In voltage control mode the magnitude and frequency of h=2k+1
the grid are controlled under load current variations. In this
The integral term for each frequency is determined
mode, the voltage of the capacitor of the filter is measured and
according to its desired magnitude. Assuming that We is equal
compared with the reference voltage, and the output is given
to the controller. In this scheme, an inner current loop is to 1.5rad/s, the integral terms are tuned to have the desired
bandwidth and provide maximum possible magnitude at the
introduced not only for damping the LC-resonance introduced
operating frequency and its harmonics. Here the bandwidth is
by the filter but also for improving the overall system stability.
set to 5500 rad/s. The bode diagram of the final open-loop
For this reason, the capacitor current of the output filter is fed
system is illustrated in Fig. 5.
back into the current control loop so as to provide both active
damping and disturbance rejection enhancement.
The inner controller is a gain (Ke) that is selected such that B. PQ control Loop
its effect on the outer loop is considered. The system is
modeled in Fig. 3. The load is modeled as two parts, a linear Another operation mode of the inverter is the PQ control
part and a non-linear part. The linear current load is modeled mode. In this mode the microgrid includes voltage sources as
as a function of the output voltage, however the non-linear well. In this condition, the reference of the current is
part is considered as a disturbance in the model. determined based on the desirable active and reactive powers
and the load voltage. The inner current loop is the same as that
In the design process, the value of Ke is set to a very low in the voltage control mode, and the inverter must inject a
value for damping the resonant frequency. Larger values of Ke particular amount of active and reactive powers which
result in higher gains at lower frequencies that could amplify determines the magnitude and phase of the reference current.
low-frequency noises [3]. Additionally, larger values of Ke Fig. 6 shows a block diagram of the inverter working in this
produce larger phase lag at the operating frequency that could mode of operation.
deteriorate both reference tracking and disturbance rejection.

470
 �-------------------------�
Fig. 6. Modeling of an inverter operated as a PQ controller

2
Gain: 0.26
o
Damping: 0.7 50 Hz
._._._._._._._._._ . _.

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Real Axis (seconds·1) x 1 0' Frequency (rad/sl
Fig. 7. Root locus of the open loop system in the PQ control mode Fig. 8. Bode diagram of the open loop system with current controller

The design process of the outer and inner controller in this grid voltage in order not to draw any reactive power from the
mode is the same as the process described for the voltage utility. The model of the DC-bus voltage control loop is shown
control loop, i.e. Ke=4. To determine a proper value for K,,, the in fig. 9. In this figure, T, is the time constant of the current
root locus of the system is plotted in Fig. 7. As it can be seen control loop of the grid-side converter which is equal to:
from this figure, a suitable value for Kp to have an optimum
1
dynamic behavior is 0.26.
1) =------ __=3.5x 10-4 ' (4)
B Wcurrentloop 2840
Now, the integral term and the cutoff frequency are
specified according to the desired bandwidth and tracking at where Ro and K are the steady-state equivalent resistance and
the operating frequency. In the PQ control mode, there is no the transfer function from the current amplitude to the active
need to add a harmonic resonant controller. Within the power, respectively, which can be found as:
previous assumption for We, the value of the integral term is
= de = Je =
tuned at 100 to have a bandwidth equal to 2840radls, which is V V 7502
R =5.625!1, (5)
small enough as compared to the resonant frequency. To o Ide P 105
achieve this bandwidth the value of Kp must be increased, such
P 3x V 'd
that the damping ratio will be decreased enough. For this k=-= gTi =466.7. (6)
reason, a phase lead compensator is added to increase the I II J2
phase at the cross over frequency. The bode diagram of the As shown in Fig. 9, the system has a right-hand pole.
final open loop system is illustrated in Fig. 8. Therefore the phase and gain margin criteria could not be used
for stability of the closed loop system. Thus the design
e. DC-link Voltage Control Loop
procedure must be done using the zero/pole placement in the
To maintain the voltage of the DC-link in a back to back Z-plane [7]. The PI controller is designed as:
converter at a constant value, the active power that flows into
the DC-link must be equal to the active power absorbed by the Ge =_(p+i) ' (7)
load. For this purpose, the voltage of the capacitor must be S
measured and compared to the reference one. The error is where P=1. 1 and 1=52.
given to a PI controller to produce the amplitude of the current The performance of the designed controller is investigated in
reference of the grid-side converter. It is worth mentioning the next section.
that this current reference must be in-phase with the utility
IV. SIMUL AnON RESUL TS
To investigate the effectiveness of the proposed control
schemes, the system of Fig. 2 is simulated in Matlab/Simulink.
The system is composed of a b-to-b converter with an LCL
filter on both sides, which is used as an interlink converter
between the utility grid and the microgrid. The electrical and
Fig. 9. Modeling of the system used for controlling of the DC-link voltage physical parameters of the system are given in Table I.

471
 A. Simulation in Voltage Control Mode the DC-link is shown in Fig. 12.
In the next simulation, a single-phase load of 40kW and
First, the performance of the proposed inter-link converter
PF=1 is added to the system load. The results are shown in
is simulated in the voltage control mode. In this mode, the
Figs. 13, 14 and 15. As it can be seen in these figures, the b­
converter controls the voltage of the microgrid. The microgrid
to-b converter controls the voltage of the microgrid in spite of
is composed of only loads without any voltage sources.
non-linear unbalanced load current while the grid current stays
Initially, the microgrid is operating under balanced and linear
sinusoidal and balanced.
load conditions. At t=0.08s, a six-pulse diode rectifier of
60kVA and PF=0.95 is added to the microgrid. The voltage of
the microgrid and the current of the microgrid and the utility
grid are shown in Figs. 10 and 11 respectively. The voltage of
400 400 .---�-�-�-�-�--�-�-�--,
,--�-�-�-�-�-�-�-;:::=:::===L.,

:E:
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.r
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40
40 - £04 0.05 0.06 0.07 0.08 0.09 0.1 0.11 0.12 0.13
- £04 0.05 0.06 0.07 0.08 0.09 0.1 0.11 0.12 0.13 Time(secolld)
Time(second)
Fig. 10. Three phase voltage of the microgrid in the voltage control mode Fig. 13. Three phase voltage of the microgrid in the voltage control mode
with adding six-pulse rectifier to load at t�O. 08. with adding single phase load at t�. 08.

0.05 0.06 0.07 0.08 0.09 0.1 0.05 0.06 0.07 0.08 0.09 0.1
Time(seco"d) Time(secolld)

0.05 0.06 0.07 0.08 0.09 0.1 0.11 0.1 2 0.13

0.05 0.06 0.07 0.08 0.09 0.1 0.11 0.1 2
Time(secolld)
Time(secolld)

Fig. 11. Three phase current of the microgrid(top figure) and utility
Fig. 14. Three phase current of the microgrid (top figure) and utility grid
grid(lower figure) in the voltage mode control with addmg sIx-pulse
(lower figure) in the voltage mode control with adding single phase load
rectifier to load at t�O. 08
at t�O. 08.
800 .---�---.----�--.---�---,
8001 r---�--�--��---

'l" 750 1----�_---_----"I

ll!
l
�
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<:> 700

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Time(second) Time(second)

Fig. 12. DC-bus voltage in the voltage mode control with adding six­ Fig. 15. DC-bus voltage in the voltage mode control with adding six­
pulse rectifier at t�O. 08. pulse rectifier at t�O. 08.

472
 B. Simulation in PQ Control Mode REFERENCES

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-150

-200

-250 '---'-----'--'--'
0.04 0.05 0.06 0.0 7 0.08 0.09 0.1 0.11 0.12 0.11
Time(second)

Fig. 16. Current tracking. injected to the microgrid in the PQ control

mode.

,
x·1.�0�-- -- -- -- --
11 , _. _r � .- �������
- rea/ active power
- actit'e power reference
10

4L-_�_�_-L_-'-_�_-'__L-_��
0.04 0.05 0.06 0.07 0.08 0.09 0.1 0.11 0.12 0.13
Tillle(second)
Fig. 1 7. Active power tracking. injected to the microgrid in PQ control
mode.

473