Fook Hoong Choo

Generalized Design of High Performance Shunt Active Power Filter With Output LCL Filter

This paper concentrates on the design, control, and implementation of an LCL-filter-based shunt active power filter (SAPF), which can effectively compensate for harmonic currents produced by nonlinear loads in a three-phase three-wire power system. With an LCL filter added at its output, the proposed SAPF offers superior switching harmonic suppression using much reduced passive filtering elements. Its output currents thus have high slew rate for tracking the targeted reference closely. Smaller inductance of the LCL filter also means smaller harmonic voltage drop across the passive output filter, which in turn minimizes the possibility of overmodulation, particularly for cases where high modulation index is desired. These advantages, together with overall system stability, are guaranteed only through proper consideration of critical design and control issues, like the selection of LCL parameters, interactions between resonance damping and harmonic compensation, bandwidth design of the closed-loop system, and active damping implementation with fewer current sensors. These described design concerns, together with their generalized design procedure, are applied to an analytical example, and eventually verified by both simulation and experimental results.

Exploring inherent damping characteristic of LCL-filters for three-phase grid-connected voltage source inverters

This paper investigates the inherent damping characteristic of LCL-filters for three-phase grid-connected voltage source inverters (VSIs). Specifically, it is found that there is an inherent damping term embedded in the feedback loop when converter current is used for implementing closed-loop control. This additional damping term can indeed neutralize the resonance introduced by LCL-filters, and thus giving rise to a more stable system than that of grid current feedback control. In this case, only one set of current sensors is required to stabilize the system, doing away with passive damping, active damping or complex state observer. Theoretical analysis is then presented and lead to a general design guideline, which suggests a way of choosing the values of grid- and converter-side inductors, so that optimum damping can be naturally achieved by solely using converter current control. In the case when this design criterion is not fulfilled, a simple compensation method is also proposed to tune the damping factor. Both simulation and experimental results are finally provided to validate the theoretical findings developed in this paper.

Implementation of Hierarchical Control in DC Microgrids

DC microgrids are becoming popular in low-voltage distribution systems due to the better compatibility with photovoltaic panels, electric vehicles, and DC loads. This paper presents a practical dc microgrid developed in the Water and Energy Research Laboratory (WERL) in the Nanyang University of Technology, Singapore. The coordination control among multiple dc sources and energy storages is implemented using a novel hierarchical control technique. The bus voltage essentially acts as an indicator of supply-demand balance. A wireless control is implemented for the reliable operation of the grid. A reasonable compromise between the maximum power harvest and effective battery management is further enhanced using the coordination control based on a central energy management system. The feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed control strategies have been tested by a DC microgrid in WERL.

Harmonizing AC and DC: A Hybrid AC/DC Future Grid Solution

It has been over 100 years since Thomas Edison built the first direct current (dc) electricity supply system on 4 September 1882, at Pearl Street in New York City. Many prominent events occurred in the electricity supply industry after that. The first one, ?the war of currents,? started in 1888. Thomas Edison and his dc distribution system were on one side, and George Westinghouse and Nikolai Tesla with the alternating current (ac) system were on other side. The war ?ended? in about 1891 when ac won as the dominant power supply medium. The key behind the ac win was the invention of the transformer that could easily step up medium voltage to high and extra-high voltage for long-distance power transfer from a remote ac generation station to load centers hundreds of kilometers away with lower transmission losses. Transformers can also step down high voltage back to low voltage at load stations to supply the low-voltage equipment. Since the end of the war, ac power systems have been developed and expanded at a tremendous speed from the initial small isolated networks, with each supplying only lighting and motor loads with a few hundreds of customers, to its current scale of super interconnected networks each supplying billions of customers over large geographic areas in one or several countries. The voltage levels and capacities of transmission networks have increased from the first commercialized three-phase ac system with only 2.4 kV, 250 kW in the town of Redlands, California, United States, to the first commercial long-distance, ultra-high-voltage, ac transmission line in China with 1,000 kV, 2,000 MW. Transmission distance has been increased from several miles to over thousands of kilometers (miles). With such major achievements, it is little wonder that the ac power system became the top engineering achievement of the 20th century. Does this mean that dc is gone? The answer is an unambiguous no. What has happened in the past 50 years, such as applications of advanced control technologies in conventional power system loads, the power electronics based high-voltage dc (HVdc) transmission, and the additional renewable power sources in low-voltage distribution system, calls for a rethink about dc and ac in electricity supply systems.

Distributed Control for Autonomous Operation of a Three-Port AC/DC/DS Hybrid Microgrid

This paper presents a distributed control scheme for reliable autonomous operation of a hybrid three-port ac/dc/distributed storage (ds) microgrid by means of power sharing in individual network, power exchange between ac and dc networks, and power management among three networks. The proposed distributed control scheme includes: 1) a fully decentralized control, which is achieved by local power sharing (LPS) in individual ac or dc network, global power sharing (GPS) throughout ac/dc networks, and storage power sharing (SPS) among distributed storages. Upon fully decentralized control, each power module can operate independently without communication links. This would benefit for riding through communication malfunction in multilayer supervision control system; 2) a multilevel power exchange control for scheduling LPS, GPS, and SPS has been developed to reduce unnecessary power exchange between ac/dc networks and operations of DS units with the benefit of reducing power exchange losses and prolonging storage lifetime. The proposed distributed control strategy has been verified by the simulation and experimental results.

One-cycle controlled three-phase PWM rectifiers with improved regulation under unbalanced and distorted input voltage conditions

In this paper, a modified one-cycle-control (OCC) scheme is proposed for regulating three-phase pulsewidth-modulated (PWM) rectifiers operating under unbalanced and distorted supply conditions. Mathematical analysis is first presented to show the dominant harmonic-voltage components appearing across the dc link of the PWM rectifier when it is controlled by an existing OCC scheme. Such dc-link harmonics when produced may aggravate harmonic currents flowing into the input terminals of the three-phase rectifier. To address these interrelated unbalance and harmonic concerns, the concept of reconstructing the appropriate reference signals in the OCC control core is introduced, before modifications are recommended for altering the key control equation. The improved OCC controller eventually developed is proven to exhibit minimal input-current distortion and a smoother dc-link voltage without using large capacitance. Other advantages exhibited by the traditional OCC scheme, such as no phase-locked loop, no frame transformation, and constant switching frequency, are also retained by the improved controller, whose theoretical findings are fully verified by experimental results obtained from a 1.2-kW three-phase PWM rectifier built in the laboratory.

A novel approach of maximizing energy harvesting in photovoltaic systems based on bisection search theorem

This paper presents a new approach of maximizing energy harvesting in photovoltaic (PV) systems using bisection search theorem (BST). The fundamental of the BST and its application into maximum power point tracker (MPPT) in PV systems are described. A microcontroller is used to control a DC/DC boost converter to realize the MPPT function. Experimental results from solar array simulator show that the proposed technique can track maximum power point very fast within a few steps. The feasibility of the proposed MPPT is also verified in natural environment condition with two solar modules in parallel. Since the proposed technique is simple in computation, cheap in implementation and fast in tracking, it is expected to be widely used to replace conventional MPPT techniques in PV systems.

Operational Adequacy Studies of a PV-Based and Energy Storage Stand-Alone Microgrid

This paper presents a probabilistic approach in the modeling of stand-alone microgrids to predict their operational adequacy performance considering uncertainty of energy storage system (ESS), photovoltaic system (PVS) and conventional generator (CG). Instead of using the daily or hourly time step, operating period a minutely time step is considered to incorporate the effect of fast ramp up/down of system components on microgrid operating adequacy through expected energy not supplied (EENS) and expected energy not used (EENU), due to load and resource variations. A time varying state of charge (SOC) model is proposed to determine power output of an ESS in reliability modeling. The reliability of a PVS is modeled in detail based on the total cross-tied configuration (TCTC) of photovoltaic (PV) cells and arrays. The proposed technique and indices will be useful for system planners to select the type and size of microgrid systems that contain alternative energy sources and storage.

Control of hybrid battery/ultra-capacitor energy storage for stand-alone photovoltaic system

Battery life is an important criterion in a stand-alone photovoltaic system operation due to intermittent characteristic of solar irradiation and demand. This paper presents a stand-alone photovoltaic system with Ni-MH battery and ultra-capacitor serving as its energy storage elements. A control strategy is proposed in this paper to reduce charging and discharging cycles and avoid deep discharges of battery. The battery converter is controlled in current mode to track a charging/discharging reference current which is given by energy management system, whereas the ultra-capacitor converter is controlled to corporate solar irradiation fluctuations, load spikes and variations to maintain a stable dc-link voltage. Isolated PV system with the proposed control schemes is created using MATLAB SIMULINK. An optimum performance is achieved to serve as both high power and high energy sources due to complementary characteristic of battery and ultra-capacitor.

Mathematical model of a solar module for energy yield simulation in photovoltaic systems

This paper presents a new mathematical model of a solar module. Solar module temperature, solar radiation and its effect on series resistance are taken into account in the model. The experimental data of the solar module under natural environment condition have been obtained to determine the model parameters. Then, the developed model is used to simulate energy yield of the solar module. This energy yield is compared with those obtained from experimental data and conventional approach. The results indicate that the proposed approach can have more accurate energy yield than conventional approach. Thus, it can be useful for the design of PV systems.