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C. A. Hans

Publications and source records attributed to C. A. Hans.

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Experimental Characterisation of Distributed Reactive Power Sharing under Communication-Induced Stress in Parallel Grid-Forming Inverters

Synchronisation of parallel grid-forming inverters is crucial for stable operation of future power systems. This includes accurate and robust reactive power sharing under realistic operating conditions such as impedance mismatch and communication constraints. In this work, reactive power sharing by virtue of a distributed control law is investigated under line impedance mismatch. Furthermore, robustness and transient behaviour of the proposed approach are experimentally evaluated under communication-induced stressors including a fixed 3% packet loss and communication delays ranging from 50 ms to 100 ms, artificially introduced through a software-defined overlay. The study is conducted in a low-voltage laboratory-scale microgrid comprising two parallel grid-forming inverters, an AC load, and a grid-following battery system acting as a reactive power injector. The results show reactive power sharing convergence up to 90 ms communication delay, with a stability boundary between 90 ms and 100 ms, which decreases with increasing integral gain.

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Microgrid Operation Control with Adaptable Droop Gains

Modern low-carbon power systems come with many challenges, such as increased inverter penetration and increased uncertainty from renewable sources and loads. In this context, the microgrid concept is a promising approach, which is based on a segmentation of the grid into independent smaller cells that can run either in grid-connected or standalone mode.In microgrids, droop control is widely used for primary control. It enables proportional power sharing, depending on the droop gains. Operation control schemes considering droop control often assume fixed droop gains. However, using adaptive droop gains for grid-forming units allow to shape power sharing in presence of fluctuations, enhancing flexibility while maintaining a safe microgrid operation, particularly under uncertainty. This work introduces a bilinear formulation for microgrid operation control that finds optimal power setpoints and droop gains on a timescale of minutes by solving a finite horizon optimization problem. In detail, a robust minmax model predictive control scheme is designed for a standalone microgrid, comprising a fuel cell, a photovoltaic system and an energy storage. Closed-loop simulations are performed with and without variable droop gains. The results show an increase in renewable utilization of up to 7.5 % while reducing the power output of the fuel cell by 6 %, when allowing variable droop gains.

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Microgrid Operation Control with State-of-Charge- Dependent Storage Power Constraints

The microgrid concept offers high flexibility and resilience due to the possibility of switching between grid-connected and stand-alone operation. This renders microgrids an auspicious solution for rural areas and critical infrastructure. In standalone or islanded mode, the main objective is cost minimization while ensuring a safe and reliable operation. Optimal operation schemes for microgrids usually assume fixed power limits for energy storage units. This, however, is not sufficient for lithiumion energy storage systems, which often come with dynamic power limits that depend on the state of charge. These limits are especially prominent when the state of charge is close to its boundaries. In this paper, dynamic constraints for energy storages are modelled using convex polytopes and fitted to experimental data acquired from an 11.6 kWh lithium-ion energy storage system. The polytopic constraints are integrated in a model predictive control scheme that was designed for a standalone microgrid composed of a fuel cell, a photovoltaic generator and a lithium-ion energy storage system. To evaluate the advantages, a case study with two configurations is performed. The model predictive controller without polytopic constraints led to constraint violations in 11.77 % of the simulation time steps with a maximum deviation of 118 % above the power limits. The configuration with polytopic constraints in contrary led to no violations over the entire simulation horizon.

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Distributed Conditional Cooperation Model Predictive Control of Interconnected Microgrids

In this paper, we propose a model predictive control based operation strategy that allows for power exchange between interconnected microgrids. Particularly, the approach ensures that each microgrid benefits from power exchange with others. This is realised by including a condition which is based on the islanded operation cost. The overall model predictive control problem is posed as a mixed-integer quadratically-constrained program and solved using a distributed algorithm that iteratively updates continuous and integer variables. For this algorithm, termination, feasibility and computational properties are discussed. The performance and the computational benefits of the proposed strategy are highlighted in an illustrative case study.

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