Control of Inverter-Interfaced Distributed Generation Units for Voltage and Current Harmonics Compensation in Grid-Connected Microgrids

In this paper, a new approach is proposed for voltage and current harmonics compensation in grid-connected microgrids (MGs). If sensitive loads are connected to the point of common coupling (PCC), compensation is carried out in order to reduce PCC voltage harmonics. In absence of sensitive loads at PCC, current harmonics compensation scenario is selected in order to avoid excessive injection of harmonics by the main grid. In both scenarios, compensation is performed by the interface converters of distributed generation (DG) units. Also, to decrease the asymmetry among phase impedances of MG, a novel structure is proposed to generate virtual impedance. At fundamental frequency, the proposed structure for the virtual impedance improves the control of the fundamental component of power, and at harmonic frequencies, it acts to adaptively improve nonlinear load sharing among DG units. In the structures of the proposed harmonics compensator and the proposed virtual impedance, a self-tuning filter (STF) is used for separating the fundamental component from the harmonic components. This STF decreases the number of phase locked loops (PLLs). Simulation results in MATLAB/SIMULINK environment show the efficiency of the proposed approach in improving load sharing and decreasing voltage and current harmonics.