Foundations and Challenges of Low-Inertia Systems (Invited Paper)

By Federico E. Milano, Florian Dörfler, Gabriela Hug, David John Hill, Gregor Verbic. Power Systems Computation Conference, 2018

1,072 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The electric power system is currently undergoing a period of unprecedented changes. Environmental and sustainability concerns lead to replacement of a significant share of conventional fossil fuel-based power plants with renewable energy resources. This transition involves the major challenge of substituting synchronous machines and their well-known dynamics and controllers with power electronics-interfaced generation whose regulation and interaction with the rest of the system is yet to be fully understood. In this article, we review the challenges of such low-inertia power systems, and survey the solutions that have been put forward thus far. We strive to concisely summarize the laid-out scientific foundations as well as the practical experiences of industrial and academic demonstration projects. We touch upon the topics of power system stability, modeling, and control, and we particularly focus on the role of frequency, inertia, as well as control of power converters and from the demand-side.

Subfields: Control and Systems Engineering, Electrical and Electronic Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4f0e299d52ba037ef0ec7fb9dde1f0ef2dcb9bb0

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Citations in the corpus

Placement and Implementation of Grid-Forming and Grid-Following Virtual Inertia and Fast Frequency Response (2018, methodology): “Though the algorithm is applicable for a broader class of controllers for power electronic devices, we concentrate our analysis on two prototypical implementations of virtual inertia: Grid-following virtual inertia relying on a phase-locked loop (PLL) and grid-forming virtual inertia based on freque”
Transient Stability of Voltage-Source Converters With Grid-Forming Control: A Design-Oriented Study (2020, background): “Different from grid-following converters, grid-forming units behave as voltage sources, which possess a number of superior features, such as the blackstart capability, the enhanced synchronization performance in weak grids, and the rate of change of frequency (RoCoF) support [6], [7].”
Fast Frequency Response From Energy Storage Systems—A Review of Grid Standards, Projects and Technical Issues (2020, methodology): “The kinetic energy of a system (Ek) is calculated as [16], [17]:”
Frequency Stability of Synchronous Machines and Grid-Forming Power Converters (2020, background): “where t0 > 0 is the time when the disturbance is applied to the system, and T > 0 is the RoCoF calculation window [1], [22].”
Understanding Small-Signal Stability of Low-Inertia Systems (2021, background): “With the introduction of fast-acting Power Electronic (PE) devices, such assumptions are not valid anymore [1].”
On the Secondary Control Architectures of AC Microgrids: An Overview (2020, background): “(a) A typical time-scale of frequency-related dynamics in conventional power systems [154] , and (b) activation of frequency control loops following a disturbance at t0 in an MG [155].”