Generalized control for distributed energy inverter in community microgrid system: Off-grid and grid-connected operation

Abstract

With the increasing penetration of distributed energy resources (DER) in microgrids, DER power inverters have become a critical asset for providing power support to these microgrids. Meanwhile, the grid-forming (GFM) inverters, among these DER inverters, have gained significant attention in microgrid applications for their capability to enable the DERs to operate in different microgrid conditions and various operation modes. Moreover, with the implementation of these GFM inverters, smooth operation mode transition, GFM functions as well as black start functions can be obtained to improve the operation of the microgrid systems. In this article, a generalized control method for a single-phase GFM inverter is developed for community microgrid applications, facilitating smooth operation behavior in both operation modes with grid support functions and stable transition for different microgrid conditions. The control design procedure and function analysis of the proposed control method are explained in detail based on the community microgrid system. The effectiveness of the method in this paper is demonstrated on a 10 kW single-phase GFM inverter prototype with comparison to a model predictive method in recent literature.