Virtual Synchronous Generator Controller for Solar Photovoltaic System

The concern about the green-house gases has led to government policies to encourage adoption of renewable resources. These policies combined with decreased and improved performance of photovoltaic and wind generation resources have fostered a significant increase in installations worldwide. Furthermore, the number of these renewable energy resources is expected to continue increasing over the next few decades. Thus, the number of inverter-based resources is expected to rise in electric power systems. This non-negligible share of electric power from the power converters with respect to conventional synchronous generators could have a dramatic effect on power system stability due to a reduction in the total system inertia. To overcome this problem, inverter-based resources are combined with energy storage to emulate the synchronous generator characteristics and act as virtual synchronous generators. This approach of control of power converters emulates the effects of the inertia of traditional synchronous generator. This paper provides an explanation for general features offered by a virtual synchronous generator control strategy, mathematical model, and its controller design and the system simulation has been verified using electromagnetic transient simulation.