Transient Stability of Paralleled Virtual Synchronous Generator and Grid-Following Inverter

Abstract

The majority of inverter-based resources (IBRs) currently operate as grid-following inverters (GFLIs). However, these inverters exhibit certain stability issues when integrated in low-strength areas of the grid. To enhance the grid strength in a GFLI-dominant area, virtual synchronous generators (VSGs) can be installed. If the VSG and the GFLI are investigated as a paralleled system, despite the benefits brought by the VSG, in some cases, the transient angle instability process, caused by a voltage sag, is accelerated, making the whole system more prone to instability. Therefore, this paper aims to study the transient angle stability of a paralleled VSG-GFLI system via investigating the voltage at a common bus between the two IBRs. Subsequently, a stable region of the voltage angles of the two IBRs is determined. Based on this stable region, the stability margin of the paralleled system can be determined and used to quantitatively evaluate the system stability. Moreover, an additional control loop is proposed to improve the transient stability of the paralleled system in this paper. The proposed controller can adaptively reduce the power set-point of the VSG to avoid a complete failure of the VSG even when no stable equilibrium point exists during a voltage sag. The stability investigation and performance evaluation of the proposed method are conducted in PSCAD/EMTDC and experimentally validated.