1
Droop control in LV-Grids
Alfred Engler, Nikos Soultanis
Abstract Remote electrication with island supply systems, the increasing acceptance of the microgrids concept and the penetration of the interconnected grid with DER and RES require the application of inverters and the development of new control algorithms. One promising approach is the implementation of conventional f/U-droops into the respective inverters, thus down scaling the conventional grid control concept to the low voltage grid. Despite contradicting line parameters, the applicability of this proceeding is outlined and the boundary conditions are derived. Index Terms droops, low voltage grids, micro grids, control, distributed generation, DER, RES, VSI.
EMOTE electrication with island supply systems, the increasing acceptance of the microgrids concept [1] and the penetration of the interconnected grid with DER and RES require the application of inverters and the development of new control algorithms. One promising approach is the implementation of conventional f/U-droops into the respective inverters, thus down scaling the conventional grid control concept to the low voltage grid. By this methodology a superior system architecture is enabled, providing redundancy, enabling expandable distributed systems and avoiding vast communication expense. With the development of the control algorithm selfsyncTM the operability of droops in inverters has been proven. Being based on conventional droops this control concept can be derived from inductive coupled voltage sources. A voltage source combined with an inductance represents a high voltage line with a stiff grid or a synchronous machine (generator). Here the reactive power is related with the voltage and the active power with the phase shift or respectively with the frequency. This changes with the low voltage line and its resistive character, where reactive power is related with the phase shift and active power with the voltage. Nevertheless the droop concept is still operable due to its indirect operation, which will be outlined below. II. D ROOP
CONTROL
I. I NTRODUCTION
of the components. Such approach results in the following features: simple expansion of the system increased redundancy, as the system does not rely on a vulnerable bus system for optimisation a simple bus system is sufcient a simplied supervisory control more complex control tasks in the components. Additional redundancy in grids can be achieved by using voltage source inverters (VSI) in parallel. This approach avoids the master/slave operation. In fact, all VSIs form the grid. The inverters are coupled via the inductances resulting from their lters for the pulse suppression and of decoupling chokes (s. Fig. 2). But the conguration in Fig. 2 is difcult to handle as will be shown. The active power P and the reactive power Q of the voltage sources can be calculated as follows: P1 Q1 = = U1,e U2,e sin N (L1 + L2 ) 2 U1,e U1,e U2,e cos N (L1 + L2 ) N (L1 + L2 ) (1) (2)
A phase shift between two voltage sources causes active power transmission. Reactive power transmission is due to the voltage difference U1 U2 . Assuming standard values for the inductance L1 and L2 results in very sensitive systems, where even smallest deviations of the phase and the magnitude cause high currents between the inverters. This sensitivity is the reason why xed frequency and xed voltage controlled inverters cant operate in parallel. There is always a voltage difference due to tolerances of the sensors, references, temperature drift
f u
f0 Df -1%
u0 Du -4%
In expandable distributed inverter systems communication and/or extra cabling can be overcome if the inverters themselves set their instantaneous active and reactive power. In [2], [3] a concept has been developed using reactive power/voltage and active power/frequency droops for the power control of the inverters. The droops are similar to those in utility grids (s. Fig. 1). The supervisory control just provides parameter settings for each component, which comprise the idle frequency, the idle voltage, the slopes of the droops and basic commands. This way expensive control bus systems are replaced by using the grid quantities voltage and frequency for the co-ordination
-1
1P PN
-1
1Q QN
Fig. 1.
Conventional droops in the interconnected grid
U1
L1
L2
U2
U1
U2
equivalent circuit
phasor diagram
Fig. 2.
Inductive coupled voltage sources
and ageing (e. g. 1 - 5%) and also crystals are not equal. The frequency errors of the crystals are integrated over the time, resulting in hazardous angle differences (s. Eq. 1). The obvious method for implementing frequency droops is to use P as a function of f . But in a real system obtaining an accurate measurement of instantaneous frequency is not straight-forward. Measuring instantaneous real power is easier. It has therefore been proposed [2] a control with f to be a function of P : the VSI output power is measured and this quantity is used to adjust its output frequency.
f0 i P Tmech st1 st'1 u0 u Q Texcit e st2 IuI
U/V, Itotal*10/A
f j
u ref
Fig. 4. Two battery inverters SunnyIsland TM by SMA Regelsysteme GmbH, Kassel, Germany operating in parallel (rated power 4.2 kW, clock 16 kHz, coupling inductor 0.8 mH)
300 200 100 0 I U
power acquisition
decoupling
droops
voltage reference
100 200 300
Fig. 3.
Control approach selfsyncTM by ISET e. V., Kassel, Germany [4]
6 4 IL1, IL2, IL3/A 2 0
5.01
5.02
5.03
5.04 t/s
5.05
5.06
5.07
5.08
Firstly this control approach, named selfsyncTM , was implemented into the battery inverter SunnyIsland TM for rural electrication (s. Fig. 4). For an experiment [5] three of these inverters programmed with this scheme were connected on a single phase to an ohmic load, each via a thin low voltage cable. The frequency droop of the inverters denoted by L1 , L2 in Fig. 5 was set to 1 Hz/rated power. The inverter denoted with L3 was set to 2 Hz/rated power. It is evident that this method allows L3 to supply a smaller proportion of power. The load sharing corresponds to the settings. L1 , L2 are equal, L3 half of it. Noticeable is the phase shift of L3 to L1 , L2 which is due to the different loading of the cables, causing a slight voltage difference between the inverters, which results in reactive power ow. The compatibility of selfsyncTM with rotating generators [6] and compatibility with the grid [7] will be outlined in the full paper. III. I MPLICATIONS
OF LINE PARAMETERS
IL1, L2 IL3
2 4 6 5 5.01 5.02 5.03 5.04 t/s 5.05 5.06 5.07 5.08
Fig. 5. 3 kW steady state operation; load sharing of three SunnyIslands TM running in parallel
The active power P and the reactive power Q of resistive coupled voltage sources - here an inverter and a grid - can be calculated as follows with the notation according to Fig. 6: Qinv Pinv = = Uinv,e Ugrid,e sin Rline 2 Uinv,e Uinv,e Ugrid,e cos . Rline Rline (3) (4)
A. Power transmission in the low voltage grid Table I shows the typical line parameters R , X and the typical rated current for the high-, medium- and low voltage lines. Assuming inductive coupled voltages sources for representing the droop controlled inverters and the distribution system would be only correct for the high voltage level. A medium voltage line has mixed parameters and the low voltage line is even predominantly resistive.
TABLE I T YPICAL LINE PARAMETERS [8] Type of line low voltage line medium voltage line high voltage line R /km 0.642 0.161 0.06 X /km 0.083 0.190 0.191 IN A 142 396 580
R X
Ugrid
Rline
Uinv
d Ugrid Uinv
equivalent circuit
phasor diagram
Fig. 6.
Resistive coupled voltage sources
7.7 0.85 0.31
Eq. 4 reveals that the active power ow and the voltage is linked in the low voltage grid. A phase difference between the voltage sources causes reactive power ow (s. Eq. 3). This fact suggests to use active power/voltage and reactive power/frequency droops - hereinafter called opposite droops - in the low voltage grid instead of reactive power/voltage and active power/frequency droops - hereinafter called conventional droops.
B. Comparison of droop concepts for the low voltage level In the following the advantages and disadvantages of using conventional or inverse droops on the low voltage level are discussed. The boundary conditions for applying conventional droops in low voltage grids will be outlined afterwards. In the low voltage grid the voltage prole is linked with the active power distribution. Reactive power is not suited for voltage control. From a systems view the voltage control and the active power dispatch are the major control issues. Table II shows pros and cons of using these two droop concepts.
TABLE II C OMPARISON OF DROOP CONCEPTS FOR THE
LOW VOLTAGE LEVEL
Still the question of voltage control remains open, which should be supported by the grid layout. However, in order to improve the situation the partial compensation of lines has been successfully demonstrated by means of simulation. ACKNOWLEDGMENT We would like to express our thanks to the European Commission for their support in the MicroGrids-project ENK5-CT2002-00610. R EFERENCES
[1] J. Lynch, MicroGrid power networks, Cogeneration & On-Site Power Production, James & James, London, May-June 2004. [2] A. Engler, Regelung von Batteriestromrichtern in modularen und erweiterbaren Inselnetzen, Dissertation.de, Berlin, May 2002, ISBN 3-89825439-9. [3] A. Engler, Control of Parallel Operating Battery Inverters, 1st PV Hybrid Power Systems Conference, Aix-en-Provence, September 2000. [4] A. Engler, Vorrichtung zum gleichberechtigten Parallelbetrieb von einoder dreiphasigen Spannungsquellen, German patent No. 101 40 783.1 (pending), European patent No. 02 018 526.26 (pending), US Patent No. US 6,693,809 B2, Feb. 17, 2004 (granted), Japanese patent No. 2002240991 (pending). [5] A. Arulampalam, M. Barnes, A. Engler, A. Goodwin, N. Jenkins, Control of Power Electronic Interfaces in Distributed Generation, International Journal of Electronics, London, XXXX 2004. [6] A. Engler, C. Hardt, Ph. Strauss and M. Vandenbergh, Parallel Operation of Generators for Stand-Alone Single Phase Hybrid Systems, EPVSEC, Munich, October 2001. [7] S. Papathanassiou, D. Georgakis, N Hatziargyriou, A. Engler, Ch. Hardt, Operation of a prototype Micro-grid system based on microsources equipped with fast-acting power electronic interfaces, 31th PESC, Aachen, June 2004. [8] Klaus Heuk, Klaus-Dieter Dettmann, Elektrische Energieversorgung, Vieweg, 3rd edition.
compatible with HV-level compatible with generators direct voltage control active power dispatch
conventional droop yes yes no yes
opposite droop no no yes no
As one can see from the Table II the only advantage of using the inverse droops is the direct voltage control. But if one would control the voltage this way, no power dispatch would be possible. Each load would be fully supplied by the nearest generator. As this generally is not possible, voltage deviations would remain in the grid. Using conventional droops results in connectivity to the high voltage level, allows power sharing also with rotating generators and a precise power dispatch. The voltage deviations within the grid depend on the grid layout, which is todays standard. IV. I NDIRECT
OPERATION OF DROOPS
Basically, the conventional droop is operable in the low voltage grid due to the generators voltage variability by means of exchanging reactive power. The reactive power of each generator is tuned the way that the resulting voltage prole satises the desired active power distribution. In the low voltage grid the reactive power is a function of the phase angle (s. Eq. 3). This is adjusted with the active power / frequency droop. The control sense of the entire loop has to be consistent. Four stable operating points result, two of which make sense, depending on the slopes of the droops. A mathematical derivation and respective simulations will be presented in the full paper, explaining the effectiveness of the indirect operation of the droop control in LV-grids. V. C ONCLUSION It has been shown that the droops, used in the interconnected grid, can be used effectively on the low voltage level due to their indirect operation. So far, this effect has not been reported about. The only boundary condition is the same sign for the frequency as well as for the voltage droop factors. As a consequence of this outcome the control strategy of the conventional grid can be down scaled to the low voltage level without any restrictions. This coherence will support the introduction of DER and RES on the low voltage level and concerns about grid stability and safety can be alleviated.
Dr.-Ing. Alfred Engler is head of the group Electricity Grids of ISETs division Engineering and Power Electronics. He has been with ISET e.V., Kassel, Germany, which he joined in 1995. He received his Dipl.-Ing. (Masters) in 1995 from the Technical University of Braunschweig with a thesis on control of induction machines. In 2001 Dr. Engler received the degree Dr.-Ing. (Ph.D.) for the development of control algorithms for inverters in modular and expandable island systems. He is mainly involved with inverter control, island grids, micro grids, power quality and grid integration of wind power. He has presented the results of his work in about 40 publications and patents. He regularly lectures in distributed generation and control of power electronics.
Nikos Soultanis is
