New Perspectives and Systematic Approaches for Analyzing Negative Damping-Induced Sustained Oscillation

Sustained oscillations (SOs) are commonly observed in systems dominated by converters. Under specific conditions, even though the origin of SOs can be identified through negative damping modes using conventional linear analysis, utilizing the describing function to compute harmonic amplitude and frequency remains incomplete. This is because a) it can not cover the cases where hard limits are not triggered, and b) it can not provide a complete trajectory for authentic linear analysis to confirm the presence of SO. Hence, two analytical methods are proposed by returning to the essential principle of harmonic balance. a) A dedicated approach is proposed to solve steady-state harmonics via Newton–Raphson iteration with carefully chosen initial values. The method encompasses all potential hard limit triggered cases. b) By employing extended multiharmonic linearization theory and considering loop impedance, an authentic linear analysis of SO is conducted. The analysis indicates that the initial negative damping modes transform into multiple positive damping modes as SO develops. Simulation validations are performed on a two-level voltage source converter using both PSCAD and RT-LAB. Additionally, valuable insights into the work are addressed considering the modularity and scalability of the proposed methods.