Adaptation of Commercial Current-Controlled Inverters for Operation with Virtual Oscillator Control
- University of Washington
- National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
- University of Minnesota
- Enphase Energy
Virtual oscillator control (VOC) is a decentralized time-domain control technique for ac microgrids where inverters are regulated to emulate the dynamics of weakly nonlinear oscillators. VOC enables the design of modular and scalable systems where inverters can synchronize and share power without communication and in near real-time. In this paper, we show how off-the-shelf commercial inverters with current control can be reprogrammed to behave as voltage sources with virtual oscillator dynamics for deployment in islanded settings. We focus on commercial grid-tied inverters that have an inner current-control loop and show how the outer-loop controls can be straightforwardly modified to enable voltage-control-mode operation. To illustrate the practicality and ease of our approach, the proposed strategy was implemented on a 3.2 kVA experimental test bed composed of 10 SunPower-brand micro-inverters with special firmware for VOC implementation. Results from the experiments not only demonstrate feasibility of the proposed dual-loop VOC architecture on a hardware setup but also show improved voltage regulation due to the additional voltage control loop.
- Research Organization:
- National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Renewable Power Office. Solar Energy Technologies Office
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC36-08GO28308
- OSTI ID:
- 1529859
- Report Number(s):
- NREL/CP-5D00-72775
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Presented at the 2019 IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition (APEC), 17-21 March 2019, Anaheim, California
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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