PARALLEL OPERATION OF GENERATORS FOR STAND-ALONE SINGLE-PHASE HYBRID SYSTEMS - FIRST IMPLEMENTATION OF A NEW CONTROL TECHNOLOGY A. Engler, C.

. Hardt, P. Strauss, M. Vandenbergh Institut fr Solare Energieversorgungstechnik (ISET) e.V. Knigstor 59, 34119 Kassel, Germany Phone (49) 561/7294-144, Fax (49) 561/7294-222, E-mail: aengler@iset.uni-kassel.de

ABSTRACT: The AC-coupling of components for stand-alone PV-battery-diesel hybrid power systems and the distributed generation in renewable energy micro grids is a challenging task for the control technology. Todays systems mostly run in master/slave operation with one battery inverter or one genset as the grid master. Extendable distributed power supplies can be considerably improved by introducing multi-master control concepts for hybrid systems that were recently demonstrated at ISET for the first time world-wide. In experiments it was shown that a grid compatible parallel operation of inverters and small standard asynchronous and synchronous motor-generator sets is possible. Also it was demonstrated that the short circuit power can be increased by the parallel connection of multiple inverters and gensets. The relevance of this new control concept for mini grids and for the hybrid systems technology is assessed. Keywords: mini grid 1; hybrid system 2; battery inverter - 3

MULTI-MASTER OPERATION

Implementing a multi-master control concept into battery inverters enables a simple PV-battery-diesel system design. This is characterised by an easy expandability with further battery inverters and/or gensets (s. Figure 1).

Such approach results in the following advantages: simple expansion of the system increased redundancy, as the system does not rely on a vulnerable bus system for optimisation a simple bus system is sufficient a simplified supervisory control The more complex control tasks require a minimum of computing power, e. g. a digital signal processor (DSP).
f f0

-1%

Figure 1: AC-coupled hybrid system A high redundancy results as all battery inverters are independent grid forming units. Thus one unit can fail without affecting the operation the overall system. A continuos operation of the power supply is guaranteed even if one unit fails. These inverters applying the voltage controlled mode avoid fast communication [10], [11]. 1.1 Power sharing without communication Communication and extra cabling can be avoided if the components themselves determine their instantaneous set value for active and reactive power. In [7] a concept has been developed using reactive power/voltage and active power/frequency droops (Figure 2) for the power control of the inverters. The droops are similar to those in utility grids. The supervisory control just provides parameter settings for each component. Expensive control bus systems are replaced by using the grid voltage and frequency for controlling the components.
-1 0
frequency droop

P PN

u u0

-4%

-1

0
voltage droop

Q QN

Figure 2: Grid compatible frequency and voltage droops for synchronisation

1.2 Paralleling Voltage Source Inverters Additional redundancy in hybrid systems can be achieved by using voltage source inverters (VSI) in parallel. This approach avoids the master/slave operation. Thus it is not possible to distinguish between grid forming and grid supporting units. In fact all VSIs form the grid. The inverters are coupled via the inductances resulting from cabling and filters for the pulse suppression of the inverters (s. Fig. 3 a). But the configuration in Fig. 3 a is difficult to handle as will be shown. The active power P and the reactive power Q of voltage sources coupled with inductors can be calculated as follows:
P= U 1 U 2 sin( )

(1) Figure 4: Two battery inverters (Sunny Island, SMA Regelsysteme GmbH, Kassel, Germany) operating in parallel

( L1 + L2 )

and
Q= U 12 U 1 U 2 cos( ) ( L1 + L2 ) ( L1 + L2 )

(2).

P: Q: U1,U2: : : L1,2:

active power reactive power rms-values of the voltage sources phase shift between voltage sources cycle frequency of the grid coupling inductances

Equation 1 reveals that a phase shift between two voltage sources causes active power transmission. Reactive power transmission is due to voltage differences U1-U2 (Eqn. 2). Assuming standard values for the inductance L1+L2 results in very sensitive systems, where even smallest deviations of the phase and the magnitude cause high currents between the inverters. Therefore a precise control with complex algorithms is required for the parallel operation of voltage source inverters [9]. Figure 5: Performance of transient overloaded parallel operating inverters in an island grid
U1 L1 L2 U2 U1 U2

3 PARALLEL OPERATION OF INVERTERS AND GENSETS Due to its nature a genset behaves similar to a conventional grid. Therefore it can be operated in parallel with the above outlined battery inverters. These are grid compatible by means of control techniques. A prerequisite of course is that the frequency droops as well as the voltage droops of the units are in the same range. In this case even load sharing becomes possible. 3.1 Transient behaviour The synchronisation process of a battery inverter to an island grid, which is formed by a standard diesel genset equipped with an asynchronous generator, is depicted in Figure 7. Here the idle frequency of the inverter f0 was set to a value for charging the battery. Thus after activating the inverter a charging current occurs. Furthermore the voltage of the genset is affected in a way that it corresponds to the rated rms-value of the intverter (230 Vrms). This is due to the relation of the slopes of the voltage droops of the inverter and the genset.

a)

b)

Figure 3: Voltage sources coupled via inductors a) equivalent circuit b) phasor diagram 2 PARALLEL OPERATION OF INVERTERS

The approach described above has been successfully implemented. Various experiments with active, reactive and transient loads were carried out in ISETs laboratories. A very precise load sharing (<1% error for active load) between the inverters has been achieved. Figure 5 shows the start of a compressor which is connected with two inverters. The voltage of the two inverters (Ch1, Ch2) is equal. Their currents (Ch3, Ch4) equalise within three periods, though the inverters are overloaded in the beginning.

The voltage quality of the hybrid configuration is essentially better than of the gensets themselves. 3.2 Properties of the overall system Another laboratory test was performed in order to investigate the steady state performance of parallel operated units. The test system corresponds to Figure 1 and comprises a genset equipped with the synchronous generator depicted in Figure 8.

Figure 9 shows the active power contribution of the two inverters and the genset versus frequency.

Figure 6: Single phase genset 2 kW with asynchronous generator (Fa. Kirsch, Trier, Germany)

u
Figure 9: Superposition of frequency droops (based on measurements) As the theory reveals [6] the resulting frequency droop of the combined system can be calculated by superposition, which corresponds to this laboratory test (s. Figure 9). It is noteworthy that the peak power of the overall system (here about 10 kVA) is the sum of the peak power of all generating units. Concerning the system design and expansion this means that the peak power of existing power supplies can be increased by simply adding such battery inverters in parallel. In case of big loads all units contribute active and reactive power. 4 INCREASING SHORT CIRCUIT POWER

Figure 7: Synchronisation process of a battery inverter to the genset in Figure 6 As outlined above the utilisation of frequency and voltage droops allows an easy expansion of supply systems. The total power can be increased and locally distributed systems (mini grids) become possible (s. Figure 10). In such systems it is necessary that circuit breakers can be applied. For testing, a short circuit was caused as indicated in Figure 10. A circuit breaker (32 A / B-characteristic) was tripped with a peak current of about 250 A (s. Figure 11). After tripping the circuit breaker the voltage is restored immediately. It can be concluded that systems based on the described control strategy have similar behaviour as interconnected grids and thus allow the application of the same protection devices. 5 CONCLUSIONS

Figure 8: Sunny Island (SMA Regelsysteme GmbH, Kassel, Germany) and genset with synchronous machine (Honda) The performed laboratory tests have shown, that load sharing with a lot of different gensets is possible. This comprises units with asynchronous and synchronous generators as will be shown below. Just the settings of the battery inverters frequency droops have to be adapted.

The feasibility and advantages of parallel working battery inverters in modular PV and RE hybrid systems have been shown. The performance and expandability of hybrid systems is improved by introducing control algorithms applying active power/frequency and reactive power/voltage characteristics. These are compatible with

REFERENCES [1] W. Leonhard, Springer-Verlag Control of Electrical Drives, 1996 [2] W. Kleinkauf, J. Sachau, Components for Modular Expandable and Adaptable PV Systems, 12th European PVSEC 1994 [3] J. Sachau, Netzbildung mit Synchronmaschine und batteriegekoppeltem Stromrichter zur Nutzung erneuerbarer Energiequellen, Dissertation Universitt GhKassel 1991 [4] J. Sachau, A. Engler, O. Haas, Control Methods of Modular Decentral Electricity Supplies, 13th European PVSEC 1995 [5] J.-F. Chen, C.L. Chu, Combination VoltageControlled and Current-Controlled PWM Inverters for UPS Parallel Operation [6] W. Kleinkauf, F. Raptis, J. Sachau, P. Zacharias et al; "Modular Systems Technology for Decentral Electrification EUREC-Agency's MEGA-Hybrid Project", Common Public. of ISET, ITER, CRES, WIP, Proc. 13th EC PV Solar Energy Conf., Nice, 1995 [7] F. Raptis; Design of Operational Control for StandAlone Grids with Renewable Energies, Presentation at ISET, October 1994 [8] Heinz van der Broeck, A simple method for parallel operation of inverters, IEEE, 1998 [9] T. Kawabata et. al, Large capacity parallel redundant transistor UPS, IPEC, Tokyo, 1983 [10] A. Engler, Control of Parallel Operating Battery Inverters; PV Hybrid Power Systems Conference, Aix-en-Provence, 2000 [11] A. Engler, O. Haas, B. Kansteiner, W. Kleinkauf, F. Raptis, J. Sachau und P. Zacharias, "Control of parallel working power units in expandable grids 14th EPVEC, Barcelona, 1997

Figure 10: Short circuit in a distributed mini grid

Figure 11: Current and voltages of the short circuit conventional interconnected grids. Hybrid systems with such features for power distribution are most suitable for decentralised electrification purposes and thus for the dissemination of PV and RE technologies. Furthermore they support the integration of gensets and allow the design of mini grids with increased short circuit power. The development of battery inverters synchronised with droops therefore will increase the reliability of supply systems and simplify the supervisory control. An innovative system design characterised by an easy expandability will result. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT We would like to express our thanks to the European Commission for their support in the HYBRIX Project CT1999-13-05-1 (ENERGY Programme) and the German BMWI for their support in the project Modulare PV- und Hybridsystemtechnik, No. 0329833.