A Control Strategy for Enhanced Operation of Inverter-Based Microgrids Under Transient Disturbances and Network Faults

This paper proposes an enhanced control strategy for electronically coupled distributed energy resources that improves the performance of the host microgrid under network faults and transient disturbances. The proposed control strategy does not require controller mode switchings and enables the electronically coupled distributed energy resources to ride through network faults, irrespective of whether they take place within the host microgrid or impact the upstream grid. Moreover, the proposed control ensures acceptable power quality for the duration of the faults, which is an important feature for protection against certain classes of faults, as well as for sensitive loads. Further, the paper proposes a supplementary control loop that improves the microgrid post-fault recovery. The effectiveness of the proposed control strategy is demonstrated through a comprehensive set of simulation studies, conducted in the PSCAD/EMTDC software environment.