Small signal stability enhancement using GFM-based inverter control integrated with wide area damping controller in solar integrated microgrid network

In the electrical grid, the angular stability of the power system is very crucial as it leads to local and inter area oscillations which eventually leads to system blackouts. The proposed research focuses in the development of coordinated control of Virtual Synchronous Machine-based Grid Forming (GFM) Inverter control and optimized Power System Stabilizers (PSS) based on the information from wide area measurements can effectively damp the local and inter area modes of oscillations in the microgrid network. The proposed grid forming inverter control could mimic the behavior of synchronous machines which provides increased system inertia in low inertia grids due to high penetration of renewables. This approach considers rotor speed deviation as input for the local PSS and tie line power as the remote input for the wide-area damping controller. A Genetic Algorithm based optimization approach is used to obtain the optimal parameters of local PSS and wide area damping controller to get the increased oscillation damping. The proposed controllers are implemented and test on a Multimachine 11 Bus two-area power system using MATLAB/SIMULINK version 2023b. In this work, small signal stability dynamics is investigated considering GFM-based inverter control for solar Photovoltaic (PV) system under various scenarios. The modal analysis techniques are employed to evaluate small signal stability, utilizing Digsilent Power Factory 2022. The proposed model is also developed in Real-Time Digital Simulator, OPALRT platform and real-time simulation results are obtained. The detailed investigation analysis proves that GFM-based inverter control and optimized PSS concept can dampen the local and interarea modes of oscillations by achieving fast system response, reduced transients and synchronization stability.