Enhancing Frequency Regulation Support through Several Synthetic Inertial Approaches for WDPS

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to propose an enhancement to the primary frequency control (PFC) of the San Cristobal Island hybrid wind–diesel power system (WDPS). Naturally, variable speed wind turbines (VSWT) provide negligible inertia. Therefore, various control strategies, i.e., modified synthetic inertial control, droop control and traditional inertial control, if introduced into VSWT, enable them to release hidden inertia. Based on these strategies, a WDPS has been simulated under seven different control strategies, to evaluate the power system performance for frequency regulation (FR). Furthermore, the student psychology-based algorithm (SBPA) methodology is used to optimize the WDPS control. The results show that modified synthetic inertial control is the most suitable approach to provide FR. However, further exhaustive research validates that droop control is a better alternative than modified synthetic inertial control due to the negligible system performance differences. In addition, droop control does not require a frequency derivative function in the control system. Therefore, the hybrid system is more robust. Moreover, it reduces the steady state error, which makes the power system more stable. In addition, a pitch compensation control is introduced in blade pitch angle control (BPAC) to enhance the pitch angle smoothness and to help the power system to return to normal after perturbations. Moreover, to justify the performance of hybrid WDPS, it is tested under certain real-world contingency events, i.e., loss of a wind generator, increased wind speed, fluctuating wind speed, and simultaneously fluctuating load demand and wind speed. The simulation results validate the proposed WDPS control strategy performance.