Stationary Frame Current Control Evaluations for Three-Phase Grid-Connected Inverters with PVR-based Active Damped LCL Filters

Abstract

Grid-connected inverters (GCIs) with an LCL output filter have the ability of attenuating high-frequency (HF) switching ripples. However, by using only grid-current control, the system is prone to resonances if it is not properly damped, and the current distortion is amplified significantly under highly distorted grid conditions. This paper proposes a synchronous reference frame equivalent proportional-integral (SRF-EPI) controller in the αβ stationary frame using the parallel virtual resistance-based active damping (PVR-AD) strategy for grid-interfaced distributed generation (DG) systems to suppress LCL resonance. Although both a proportional-resonant (PR) controller in the αβ stationary frame and a PI controller in the dq synchronous frame achieve zero steady-state error, the amplitude- and phase-frequency characteristics differ greatly from each other except for the reference tracking at the fundamental frequency. Therefore, an accurate SRF-EPI controller in the αβ stationary frame is established to achieve precise tracking accuracy. Moreover, the robustness, the harmonic rejection capability, and the influence of the control delay are investigated by the Nyquist stability criterion when the PVR-based AD method is adopted. Furthermore, grid voltage feed-forward and multiple PR controllers are integrated into the current loop to mitigate the current distortion introduced by the grid background distortion. In addition, the parameters design guidelines are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed strategy. Finally, simulation and experimental results are provided to validate the feasibility of the proposed control approach.