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Renewable energy sources are typically interfaced to the main grid at the distribution level, through power electronic converter interfaces. Testing these microgrid systems is a crucial aspect which is gaining increased interest and importance among researchers. This article proposes a system emulator, for testing microgrids, with a special focus on replicating unbalanced network conditions. The proposed system uses a single back-to-back bidirectional converter for real-time emulation, and the user has the option to chose any node of their interest to study the dynamics. This is different from the ones proposed to-date - most of them focus on balanced systems, and use several converters to replicate the dynamics of the microgrid system, in which each converter mimics one entity at a time (source or load). A system with two generators is emulated for different control strategies and types of unbalances in the network. The crucial aspects related to the modelling and control are presented in detail supported by simulations and experimental validation on a prototype developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strategies to implement emulation of large power electronic converters with different topologies using a generic multiport decomposition technique with different levels by exploiting the parallel nature of field programmable gate array (FPGA) are explained in this article. Switches are modeled as on/off resistors and a Python-based software tool is developed to precompute the system matrices corresponding to each switch combination. Converters like three-phase five-level-flying-capacitor are modeled in C using the precomputed data, converted to VHDL and implemented on ZCU104 and ZedBoard using Vivado and verified against the corresponding MATLAB-Simulink model. Also, the real-time performance is analyzed by connecting it for the closed-loop speed control of induction motors of various specifications by changing the load torque and reference speed and found out that the latency is less than 6 μs, which is sufficient for the wide range of variable frequency drive applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The control algorithms proposed to improve load sharing, stability, and power quality in microgrids need rigorous testing. Real-time emulation is one of the proven approaches to provide realistic testing environments for the development of products and control algorithms. Typically, for microgrid system-level testing, individual component-level (source or load) emulators are employed: hardware test bed clusters. These use multiple converters, increasing control complexity and consuming space. In this article, we propose a flexible microgrid system emulator, based on a single converter for the testing of a complete microgrid, at any node selected by the user. This is unlike the case of emulators proposed in the literature till date, which use a large number of converters to emulate the system dynamics, wherein each converter is used to mimic the behavior of one particular component, such as a single source or a single load. The modeling and control aspects are discussed, and the accuracy of the model developed and the working of the emulator are established through simulations and experiments on a laboratory prototype, respectively, considering the case of a simple two-distributed-generator-based microgrid for various scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies microgrids where loads are supplied by parallel-connected inverters controlled by decentralized active power/voltage frequency and reactive power-/voltage-magnitude droop control laws. A paralleled ac system, such as a multiinverter microgrid, is susceptible to circulating currents due to differences in voltage magnitude, frequency, phase angle, or dc offset. Circulating currents due to differences in voltage magnitude and dc offset have been known issues reported in literature. However, an in-depth analysis of the problem is required to ascertain the deviation of the system-operating condition from the desired condition. This paper provides a mathematical model that predicts the effect of voltage-magnitude offsets on reactive power sharing between inverters. Simulation and experimental results verify the accuracy of the analytical results obtained from the mathematical model. We examine the effect of dc-circulating currents and propose a simple capacitor emulation control law implemented in software to eliminate dc-circulating currents. This solution is a possible alternative for hardware implementation to eliminate dc-circulating currents. The effectiveness of the capacitor emulation control law has been verified through experimental results. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]