Raouf at 2016

This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been
fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TSG.2016.2580945, IEEE
Transactions on Smart Grid
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SMART GRID, VOL. XX, NO. XX, AUGUST XXXX 1
Performance Recovery of Voltage Source Converters

with Application to Grid-connected Fuel Cell DGs
M. Ehsan Raoufat, Student Member, IEEE, Alireza Khayatian, Member, IEEE, and Aslan Mojallal, Student
Member, IEEE
Abstract—Most common types of distributed generation (DG) attracted more attention lately due to their ability to provide
systems utilize power electronic interfaces and, in particular, independent control of active and reactive power, limiting the
three-phase voltage source converters (VSCs) which are mainly current during faulty conditions and overload protection [11].
used to regulate active and reactive power delivered to the grid.
The main drawbacks of VSCs originate from their nonlinearities, In this approach, the line current is usually regulated using
control strategies, and lack of robustness against uncertainties. conventional proportional-integral (PI) controllers in rotating
In this paper, two time-scale separation redesign technique is coordinate [12]. These conventional PI controllers have found
proposed to improve the overall robustness of VSCs and address a long history of successful industrial applications because of
the issues of uncertainties. The proposed controller is applied their simple structure and excellent capabilities [13]. However,
to a grid-connected Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) distributed
generation system to recover the trajectories of the nominal they are in need of accurate values for their parameters and
system despite the presence of uncertainties. Abrupt changes mostly effective at a single operating point.
in the input dc voltage, grid-side voltage, line impedance and The introduction of new robust nonlinear techniques has cre-
PWM malfunctions are just a few uncertainties considered in ated new opportunities for engineers to deal with uncertainties.
our evaluations. Simulation results based on detailed model To overcome the problems originating from system uncertain-
indicate that the redesigned system with lower filter gain ()
achieves more reliable performance in compare to the conven- ties, different control design techniques have been introduced
tional current control scheme. The results also verified that via Lyapunov stability theory and input-to-state stability (ISS)
the redesigned controller is quite successful in improving the conditions. These include robust backstepping [14], adap-
startup and tracking responses along with enhancing the overall tive backstepping [15], geometric control [16], and sliding
robustness of the system. mode control designs [17]. Over recent years, several robust
Index Terms—Power converters, solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC), nonlinear control techniques have been applied to VSCs. In
distributed generation (DG), time-scale separation redesign. [18], a sliding mode controller has been implemented for a
photovoltaic system which leads to high frequency switching
I. I NTRODUCTION in the converter. A sliding mode-based feedback linearizing
controller has also been reported for grid-connected fuel
D RAMATIC increase in the amount of distributed genera-
tions (DGs) combined with advances in semiconductors
have further increased the applications of power electronics.
cells [19]. However, feedback linearizion technique requires
accurate system model to transform a nonlinear process into a
Most common types of DG units utilize power electronic linear one. In [20], model predictive control (MPC) has been
interfaces and, in particular, three-phase voltage source con- used for energy management in micro-grids which usually
verters (VSCs) which are mainly used to regulate active and requires extensive computation. Another control method based
reactive power delivered to the grid [1]. These converters on passivity has also been applied to DG resources in [21],
have many applications in different types of DGs including but the effect of uncertainty is not considered.
fuel cells [2]–[4], wind turbines and photovoltaic panels [5], In this paper, different types of uncertainties in three-phase
[6]. Moreover, VSCs are also utilized in back-to-back HVDC VSCs are considered and a robust nonlinear control scheme
systems and static synchronous compensators (STATCOMs) based on time-scale separation redesign [22] is proposed to
[7], [8] and other smart grid applications [9], [10]. Hence, enhance the robustness of a grid-connected Solid Oxide Fuel
maintaining stability and performance level of VSCs in the Cell (SOFC) distributed generation system. These SOFC DG
presence of uncertainties caused by dynamic nature of DGs units are an integral part of smart grids and enhancing their
and distribution network are of a great importance. robustness and performance are of significant importance in
Generally, active and reactive output power of a VSC can be smart grid applications [23]. In our approach, high gain filters
controlled based on different approaches such as current-mode are designed to estimate the uncertainties in the VSC. Then,
and voltage-mode control. Current-mode control schemes have the fast variables arising from aforementioned filters are used
in the nominal feedback control law to cancel the effect
M. Ehsan Raoufat is with the Department of Electrical Engineering and of additive uncertainties. In addition, variations in the input
Computer Science, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996 USA (e-
mail: mraoufat@utk.edu). dc voltage, line impedance, grid-side voltage and duty ratio
Alireza Khayatian is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Shiraz are mathematically formulated as additive uncertainties based
University, Shiraz, Iran (e-mail: khayatia@shirazu.ac.ir). on the nonlinear model of VSCs. As a result, the proposed
Aslan Mojalal is with the Department of Electrical Engineering and
Computer Science, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99163 USA redesign method is able to significantly mitigate the adverse
(e-mail: mojallal.aslan@gmail.com). effects of uncertainties and further enhance the system stabil-
1949-3053 (c) 2016 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TSG.2016.2580945, IEEE
Fig. 1. Configuration of a grid-connected SOFC power plant along with its basic control structures.
ity. To verify the performance of the proposed controller, time TABLE I

domain simulations are carried out using detailed dynamic T HE PARAMETERS OF DC / DC B OOST C ONVERTERS
model of SOFC DG and compared with the conventional PI Parameter Value
controller. Rated Power 50 kW each
The rest of this paper is organized as follows: Section II is Rated input voltage (Vin ) 216 V
devoted to modeling of the SOFC distributed power generation Rated output voltage (Vout ) 480 V
system along with conventional current-mode controller for the Inductor (Lbb ) 1.2 mH
three-phase VSC; in section III, time-scale separation redesign Capacitor (Cbb ) 2000 µF
techniques are described and developed to improve robustness Proportional gain (kp ) 50
of the system against possible additive uncertainties. Finally, Integral gain (ki ) 0.5
the last two sections are devoted to evaluation of the proposed Switching frequency 5 kHz
controller through detailed simulations and major conclusions
drawn from this study.
power plant is connected to the main power network through
the following power electronic converters.
II. M ODELING OF SOFC D ISTRIBUTED G ENERATION
S YSTEM
A. DC/DC Boost Converters
Fuel cells can be generally classified based on chemical
Boost converters are needed to regulate and increase the
characteristics of their electrolyte which also dictate their
output voltage of FC arrays to the desired value (Vout ). Careful
operating temperatures [24]. SOFCs are the most common
design of components and their controllers can minimize the
types of fuel cells, particularly for DG applications since they
current ripple in the fuel cells and further extend the fuel
have considerably high system efficiency, flexibility in the
cells lifetime [28]. Although the FC output voltage varies
choice of fuel and extremely low emissions. SOFCs usually
strongly with the load, a stable voltage is insured after a
use solid ceramic as the electrolyte and operate at high-
good regulation in the dc/dc Boost converter. Parameters of
temperature in the range of 600 − 1000◦ C. However, they
the boost converters used in this study are given in Table I.
are highly nonlinear in comparison to other types of fuel cells
Detailed model of these converters, design criteria and their
such as Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFCs).
control loops for FC applications are well established and can
More information on the principle of operation of SOFCs can
be found in [25].
be found in [25], [26].
In general, distributed generation of fuel cell power plant
offers many advantages such as high efficiency, low emission B. Three-phase VSCs
and flexible modular structure [27]. To construct a fuel cell Three-phase VSCs are needed to convert dc to ac voltage
power plant, individual SOFC stacks are connected in paral- and inject the desired active and reactive power to ac grids. A
lel/series depending on voltage and current requirements to typical configuration of a VSC system with input dc voltage
form an array. Meanwhile, a fuel cell power plant includes (Vdc ), series RL branches, lower and upper switching cells
several arrays of fuel cells. The 480-kW grid connected SOFC and a grid with terminal voltage Vabc is also shown in Fig.
power plant considered in this paper is made from parallel 1. These series branches can act as filters and guarantee low
connection of twelve 40-kW FC arrays and four series and ripple ac-side currents. In this paper, the grid is modeled by an
two parallel 5-kW SOFC stacks are needed to form each array. ideal three-phase voltage source and it is assumed that Vabc is
The configuration of the system along with its basic control balanced. Assuming all the switches are ideal, the state space
structures are shown in Fig. 1. As shown in this figure, a FC equations of the converter are averaged for each switching
state to obtain the overall dynamic model. Therefore, the VSC A. Two Time-Scale Separation Redesign
model can be represented as [12]: In this paper, we follow the time-scale separation redesign
dia technique in [22] to improve robustness of an uncertain
L = Vta − (R + Ron )ia − Vsa − Vnull (1)
dt nonlinear system which can be formulated with the following
dib state space model:
L = Vtb − (R + Ron )ib − Vsb − Vnull (2)
dt
dic ẋ = f (x) + g(x)(u + ψ(x)) (11)
L = Vtc − (R + Ron )ic − Vsc − Vnull (3)
dt where f (x), g(x) and ψ(x) are sufficiently smooth functions
where Ron represents on-state resistance of a switching cell. of state x ∈ Rn and u ∈ Rp is the control input. It is assumed
By using dq-transformation and mathematical manipulations, that the functions f (x), and g(x) are known while ψ(x) is
the above averaged state space model can be simplified in the an uncertain nonlinearity. To design a control input u, which
dq-frame as follows: stabilizes the origin x = 0 of (11) despite the presence of
did Vdc ψ(x), the following two assumptions are made.
L = Lω0 iq − (R + Ron )id − md − Vd (4)
dt 2 Assumption 1. There exists a feedback control law u =
diq Vdc β(x) such that the origin of the nominal closed loop system
L = Lω0 id − (R + Ron )iq − mq − Vq (5)
dt 2 (when ψ(x) = 0) is globally asymptotically stable, i.e. there
where id , iq are state variables and md , mq are control inputs exists a control Lyapunov function V (x) such that:
in the dq-frame which can be chosen as follows to decouple
∂V
the above dynamics. [f (x) + g(x)β(x)] ≤ −M (x), ∀x ∈ Rn (12)
∂x
2
md = (vd − Lω0 iq + Vd ) (6) where M (x) is positive definite and possesses a positive
Vdc 2
2 definite Hessian ∂∂ 2M
x at x = 0.
mq = (vq − Lω0 id + Vq ) (7) Assumption 2. There exists a function h(x) : Rp → Rp
Vdc
such that the p × p matrix
where vd and vq are the new control inputs which will give us
the ability to implement the current control loops and regulate ∂h
g(x)
γ(x) := Lg h(x) = (13)
active and reactive power of the converter independently. ∂x
After simplifying the VSC dynamics, it can be seen that will be nonsingular for all x. With the above assumptions, it
the controller for both the d and q-axis can be identical can be seen that the variable y = h(x) satisfies
as they have similar dynamic equations. The conventional
PI controller can be used to track the reference d and q- ẏ = Lf h(x) + γ(x)(u + ψ(x)) (14)
axis current. Therefore, the close loop system will have the ∂h
following transfer function for each axis: Lf h(x) = f (x) (15)
∂x
Kp s + Ki The following filter can be considered to estimate the unknown
G(s) = (8)
Ls2 + (R + Ron )s ψ(x):
where Kp and Ki are proportional and integral gains, respec- 1
tively. Considering the above equation, the PI controller can ẏ = Lf h(x) + γ(x)u + (ŷ − y) (16)

be designed as follows to both improve the transient response ŷ(0) = y(0) (17)
time and cancel the pole near the origin.
L where > 0 is a parameter that will be chosen later. From
Kp = (9) (15) and (16), the variable l will be defined as follows:
τi
R + Ron ŷ − y
Ki = (10) l := (18)
τi
where τi is the time constant of closed loop system which l˙ = −l − γ(x)ψ(x), l(0) = 0 (19)
can be selected in the range of 0.5 − 5 ms considering the
switching frequency. If is selected small enough, l evolves in a faster time-scale
than x, and approaches a small neighborhood of the manifold,
III. ROBUST C ONTROL OF VSC BASED S YSTEMS l = −γ(x)ψ(x). Therefore, a plausible design for u to cancel
Uncertainties exist widely in distributed generation systems the effect of ψ(x) in (11) would be
and have direct impact on the reliability and performance u = β(x) + γ(x)−1 l (20)
of the system. Therefore, robust controllers are needed, as
conventional PI controllers cannot provide enough robustness. To adopt the redesign technique to the three-phase VSC, a
Improving the robustness of VSC involves designing high state space averaged model of the converter in (4, 5) has been
gain filters for both the d and q-axis to estimate and cancel considered. These equations are coupled together and with
the effects of additive uncertainties such as changes in the the following method, we can design two sets of independent
input dc voltage, grid-side voltage, line impedance, and PWM filters to estimate the uncertainty in both the d and q-axis. An
malfunctions. averaged model of the converter can be redefined in the form
of equation (11) for the d-axis by defining fd (x) and gd (x) fluctuations and may cause the voltage profile to violate the
as follows: limits. As a result, input dc voltage of a VSC can vary with
1 Vd time. In fuel cell applications, excessive changes in the output
fd (x) = ω0 iq − (R + Ron )id − (21) current can potentially lead to a huge voltage drop due to
L L
1 large ohmic and concentration voltage drops inside the fuel
gd (x) = Vdc (22) cell stacks. This can finally lead to poor voltage regulation
2L
For the q-axis fq (x) and gq (x) can be defined as follows: of the boost converter and distortions in the input dc voltage
of the VSC. Equation (30) represents the variation of input
1 Vq voltage in d-axis:
fq (x) = ω0 id − (R + Ron )iq − (23)
L L
1 did Vdc + ∆Vdc
gq (x) =
Vdc (24) L = Lω0 iq − (R + Ron )id + md − Vd (30)
2L dt 2
It is also assumed that yd = id and yq = iq are two outputs From (11) and (30), input dc voltage uncertainty can be
of the system. Considering that gd (x) = gq (x), we have described as
1 ∆Vdc
γ(x) = Lgd h(x) = Lgq h(x) = Vdc (25) ψ(x) = (31)
2L Vdc
It can be seen that the nominal current control law mentioned In VSC based systems, behavior of the converters are highly
in section II satisfies assumption 1. From (25), γ(x) is also dependent on the grid terminal voltage. Similarly, the impact
nonsingular and satisfies assumption 2. After mathematical of variation in the grid-side voltage can be modeled as follows:
manipulation, filters for the d and q-axis can be represented did Vdc
as: L = Lω0 iq − (R + Ron )id + md − Vd + ∆Vd (32)
dt 2
1 Vd 1 2∆Vd
ŷ˙ d = ω0 iq − (R + Ron )id − + Vdc md (26) ψ(x) = (33)
L L 2L Vdc
1
− (ŷd − yd ) Power quality problems such as voltage sag and voltage flicker

1 Vq 1 (VF) can be used to represent the uncertainty in the grid-side
ŷ˙ q = ω0 id − (R + Ron )iq − + Vdc mq (27) voltage. These phenomena usually happen when the power
L L 2L
1 plant is connected to a weak power system.
− (ŷq − yq ) The grid internal resistance and inductance can be embed-

In the present study, we can consider unequal values for ded in the interface reactor of the VSC and no external RL
ŷd (0), ŷq (0) and yd (0), yq (0), respectively. The reason is that branches are needed anymore. Hence, unknown line or grid
saturation limits exist in the input duty ratio of the converter, impedance can be regarded as uncertainty in the VSC’s RL
which dictate that the input can only vary from −1 to 1 (0 to branch. Variations in cable impedance due to thermal effects
100% PWM). As a result, the restriction ŷ(0) = y(0) can be resulted from high current flows can also be considered as
removed as stated by Atassi and Khalil [29] in their high-gain uncertainty in the RL branch. The uncertainty in resistance
observer literature. Our final proposed redesigned control laws of the line or series filter can be illustrated by the following
in dq-axis can be represented as: equations:
2 Kp s + Ki did Vdc
L = Lω0 iq − (R+Ron + ∆R)id + md − Vd (34)

md = (idref − id ) − Lω0 iq + Vd (28) dt 2
Vdc s
2L 1 2∆R
+ × (ŷd − yd ) ψ(x) = id (35)
Vdc Vdc
2 Kp s + Ki However, uncertainty in the inductance can extremely degrade
mq = (iqref − iq ) − Lω0 id + Vq (29)
Vdc s the system performance and couple the dynamic equations of
2L 1 the VSC. In this case, id and iq of the system cannot be
+ × (ŷq − yq ) controlled independently and a simple PI controller cannot
Vdc
Applying the control laws (28) and (29) along with filters (26) decouple the active and reactive output power. However, with
and (27) will guarantee the stability and recovery of nominal the proposed method the performance of a nominal system
VSC performance in presence of unknown ψ(x). This type can be recovered even in case of uncertainty in the line
of uncertainty can arise due to incomplete information about inductance which explains the effective decoupling capability
the plant and may appear in the form of disturbances or other of this robust controller. The variation in the inductance can
model imperfections including component variations. be modeled as follows:
did
(L + ∆L) = (L + ∆L)ω0 iq − (R + Ron )id
B. Formulation of Uncertainties in VSCs dt
Vdc
One of the applications of VSCs are to interface the + md − Vd (36)
2
renewable sources to the power grid. However, these sources 2∆L did
have uncertain electric generation which can lead to voltage ψ(x) = (ω0 iq − ) (37)
Vdc dt
Fig. 2. Schematic diagram of a grid-connected SOFC power plant with redesigned controller.
Input noise can also affect the control signal and cause
600
undesirable output responses which are resulted from the Active power (kW)
lack of robustness. Uncertainties in the duty ratio can be 400
caused through the feedback control path with inaccurate mea- 480
surements (sensors), electromagnetic interferences or PWM 200 440
400
generator malfunction. Therefore, duty ratio uncertainty can 0 360 PI controller Redesigned cont.
0.4 0.6 0.8
be modeled as:
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
ψ(x) = ∆md (38)

Reactive power (kVar)
200
It can be seen that the VSC with the above parameter variations
100
and disturbances can be casted as a nominal system with
additive uncertainties and same formulations can be derived 120
100
0
for variations in the q-axis. The next section concentrates on 80
60 PI controller Redesigned cont.
0.4 0.6 0.8
investigating the possible effect(s) of uncertainties originated -100
from various sources in the SOFC distributed generation 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
Time (s)
system and performance evaluation of the proposed redesigned
controller. Fig. 3. Active (top) and reactive (bottom) output power in case 1 (input dc
voltage) uncertainty using PI and redesigned controller.
IV. S IMULATION R ESULTS

In order to verify the performance of the proposed con- Case 1 (input dc voltage): As output current of FCs
troller, a detailed model of a grid-connected 480-kW SOFC exceed a certain value, output voltage of FCs will drop sharply
power plant as shown in Fig. 2 is simulated using MAT- due to large ohmic and concentration voltage drops. This can
LAB/SIMULINK software with a fixed step size of 2 µs. finally lead to poor voltage regulation of the boost converter
Boost converters are used to regulate output voltage of fuel and input dc voltage uncertainty in the VSC. To investigate
cell arrays to 480 V and more information on the parameters the effect of input voltage uncertainty, a 15% decrease in the
can be found in Table I. The component values of the three- boost converter reference voltage from t = 2 s to t = 4 s
phase VSC are: L = 0.15 mH, R = 1 mΩ, Ron = 0.1 mΩ, is considered. Fig. 3 demonstrates the output power of the
Vdc = 480 V and fs = 5 kHz. Transformer parameters are SOFC power plant for both the PI and the proposed redesigned
Sn = 500 kVA, Vn = 208 V/12.5 kV, R1 = R2 = 0.005 controller. The result reveals the satisfactory performance of
PU and X1 = X2 = 0.025 PU. The reference values of the proposed method to regulate the active and reactive output
the active and reactive power flow are set as Pref = 450 power in the presence of input dc voltage variations. Output
kW and Qref = 100 kVar with a fast startup ramp in 0.5 s. voltage and current of each SOFC array are also shown in
In the followings, the proposed redesigned control law with Fig. 4. It can be seen that the FC voltage drops sharply for
= 0.001 is employed and results are compared with a the case with a conventional PI controller as a result of the
conventional PI controller having the proportional gain (9), overshoot in the active power at t = 4 s and further worsens
integral gain (10) and τi = 2 ms. the situation.
FC output voltage (V)
d-axis current (A)

400
2000
300
350 1000
200 1400
300 1200
100
250 PI controller Redesigned cont. 0 1000 PI controller Redesigned cont.
2 2.2 2.4 2 2.1 2.2
0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
FC output current (A)
300
q-axis current (A)

160 -250
0
120 -350
200 80 -450
-200
2 2.2 2.4 0.4 0.5 0.6
-400
100
PI controller Redesigned cont. -600 PI controller Redesigned cont.
0
-800
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
Time (s) Time (s)
Fig. 4. Output voltage (top) and current (bottom) of each SOFC array in case Fig. 6. d-axis (top) and q-axis (bottom) currents of the VSC in case 2 (grid-
1 (input dc voltage) uncertainty using PI and redesigned controller. side voltage) uncertainty using PI and redesigned controller.
600 600
Active power (kW)
400 550 Active power (kW) 400

500
450 350
200 450 200 300
400
4 4.2 4.4 250
350 PI controller Redesigned cont. 200 PI controller Redesigned cont.
0 2 2.2 2.4 0 4 4.1
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
200 200
100 100
120
100
0 80 0 60
4 4.05 4.1 4.15 4 4.1 4.2
-100 -100
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
Time (s) Time (s)
Fig. 5. Active (top) and reactive (bottom) output power in case 2 (grid-side Fig. 7. Active (top) and reactive (bottom) output power in case 3.1 (line
voltage) uncertainty using PI and redesigned controller. resistance) uncertainty using PI and redesigned controller.
Case 2 (grid-side voltage): To evaluate the robustness of in Fig. 7 and 8, respectively. It can be seen that dynamics of
time-scale separation redesign technique with respect to the active and reactive power for the system with the conventional
grid-side voltage variations, grid voltage increased by 25% controller are coupled in the presence of uncertainty especially
from t = 2 s to t = 4 s. It is evident from Fig. 5 that the due to variations in line inductance. In these cases, the system
proposed redesigned controller can successfully regulate the with the proposed controller has a promising reference track-
output power of the system despite the grid voltage distortion ing response and effective decoupling capability to regulate
and improves the grid disturbance rejection. In this case, the the active and reactive power independently. These results
maximum overshoot in active power decreased from 544.9 kW suggest that adoption of the proposed controller does not
to 479.8 kW which is closer to the reference value of 450 kW. necessarily need exact information about parameter’s values.
Fig. 6 reveals that the proposed controller can accurately track In particular, for smart grids applications, changes in the
the d and q-axis reference currents. neighborhood network topology can cause variations in the
Case 3 (line impedance): In this case, uncertainty has system parameters.
been considered in the line impedance by perturbing the line Case 4 (duty ratio): To investigate the robustness of the
resistance and inductance by 25%. To explain the effective proposed controller with respect to duty ratio uncertainty, three
decoupling capability of the proposed method, the reference different random Gaussian noises as shown in Fig. 9 with
value of active power (Pref ) is reduced from 450 kW to 250 variance of 0.001 and having the amplitude between ±0.1
kW at 4 s, without change in the reactive power. The results were added to duty ratio input signals of the VSC. Finally,
for uncertainty in the line resistance and inductance are shown Fig. 10 demonstrates the results in the presence of duty ratio
600 600
Active power (kW)
Active power (kW)

350
300
250
400 400
200
4 4.05 4.1 4.15
500 500
200 200
450 450

0 0
0.4 0.6 0.8 5.55 5.6 5.65 5.7
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 0 1 2 3 4 5 6

200 200
100 100
100 150
0 60
0 100
4 4.1 4.2 2.62 2.66 2.7 2.74
-100 -100
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
Time (s) Time (s)
Fig. 8. Active (top) and reactive (bottom) output power in case 3.2 (line Fig. 10. Active (top) and reactive (bottom) output power in case 4 (duty
inductance) uncertainty using PI and redesigned controller. ratio) uncertainty using PI and redesigned controller.
TABLE II
S TATISTICAL P ROPERTIES OF O UTPUT P OWER AT D IFFERENT F ILTER
0.1 G AINS
0 Active power (kW) Re. power (kVar)

∆ma SD Max SD Max
-0.1
PI controller 15.11 500.35 21.69 167.06
Noise on duty ratio
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
0.1 Redesign cont. ( = 10−2 ) 8.84 484.28 15.80 147.17
Redesign cont. ( = 10−3 ) 3.51 461.83 6.27 116.17
0
Redesign cont. ( = 10−4 ) 3.63 462.20 4.28 110.07
∆mb
-0.1
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
0.1 V. C ONCLUSIONS
0
This paper presents a new control technique based on
∆mc two time-scale separation redesign for the VSC of a grid-
-0.1 connected SOFC DG system. A three-phase VSC is used to
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
Time (s) regulate active and reactive power delivered to the grid. In
addition, variations in the input dc voltage, line impedance,
Fig. 9. Additive random Gaussian noises on duty ratio of phase a (top), b grid-side voltage and duty ratio are mathematically formulated
(middle), and c (bottom) of the VSC. as additive uncertainties based on the nonlinear model of the
VSC. As a result, the proposed controller is able to address the
issues of robustness and further enhance the system stability
uncertainty and illustrates the successful performance recovery in the presence of uncertainties. The redesigned controller also
of the nominal system which is in line with previous findings. presents a fast and accurate startup response and delivers supe-
Maximum and standard deviation (SD) of output power for rior decoupling performance as compared to the conventional
the system with a conventional PI controller and redesigned PI controller. Moreover, the redesigned controller significantly
controller with different filter gains are presented in Table II. It reduces the maximum overshoot in the output power while the
can be seen that the redesigned system with lower filter gain system with a conventional controller exhibits deterioration
() achieves more reliable performance and recover outputs in the output response which leads to excessive current and
similar to those of the nominal system. To limit the control voltage variations in the FC arrays.
efforts, is chosen as 0.001 and the output active power
of system with conventional controller showed the maximum R EFERENCES
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State-space and Lyapunov Techniques. Boston, MA, USA: Springer, 2008. Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA, in 1993.
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based control technique for integration of DG resources into the power in the Department of Electrical Engineering and
grid,” International Journal of Electrical Power & Energy Systems, vol. Computer Science at the Washington State Univer-
58, pp. 281-290, 2014. sity, Pullman, WA. His research interests include re-
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stabilization and performance recovery of uncertain nonlinear systems,” monitoring, fault diagnosis and prognosis of wind
Automatica, vol. 45, pp. 34-44, 2009. energy systems.
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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been

Performance Recovery of Voltage Source Converters

ity. To verify the performance of the proposed controller, time TABLE I

ψ(x) = ∆md (38)

IV. S IMULATION R ESULTS

FC output voltage (V)

d-axis current (A)

q-axis current (A)

400 550 Active power (kW) 400

Reactive power (kVar)

Active power (kW)

400 PI controller Redesigned cont. 400 PI controller Redesigned cont.

Reactive power (kVar)

0 Active power (kW) Re. power (kVar)

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