IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, VOL. 55, NO.

1, JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2019 111

A Novel Method of Frequency

Regulation in Microgrid
Upama Bose , Student Member, IEEE, Sumit K. Chattopadhyay , Member, IEEE,
Chandan Chakraborty , Fellow, IEEE, and Bikash Pal , Fellow, IEEE

Abstract—Owing to generation and demand mismatch, the fre- ωm Mechanical angular velocity.
quency deviation and the rate of change of frequency (RoCoF) ωr Electrical angular velocity.
may become drastic at times in an islanded microgrid. This is due ωo Nominal frequency.
to increased penetration of noninertial renewable energy sources
that brings down the system’s resilience to any kind of disturbance. Ta Accelerating torque.
Therefore, efficient control algorithms are required to mimic the Tm Mechanical torque.
inertial behavior of a conventional synchronous machine to ar- Te Electromagnetic torque.
rest/limit any sudden change. This work focuses on frequency D Damping constant.
regulation of microgrid during transient conditions by means of Pm Mechanical power.
fast-responding external energy reserve. The characteristics of a
weak grid has been studied and simulated through modeling a Pe Electrical power.
virtual synchronous machine. An inverter model is also devel- Po Nominal power.
oped to integrate the energy storage system (ESS) to the grid and kp Droop constant.
a double second-order generalized integrator phase locked loop ma Modulation index.
(DSOGI-PLL) is implemented that is capable of synchronizing the id d-axis inverter current.
system under distorted and unbalanced situation. A new technique
to estimate the frequency of the microgrid is reported. A simple iq q-axis inverter current.
proportional controller-based approach for different level of pulsed id ref Reference d-axis inverter current.
power injection (using ultracapacitors and batteries) is proposed iq ref Reference q-axis inverter current.
and simulated using MATLAB. Experimental demonstration is Pess Rating of ESS-inverter.
made using batteries only but with two different current-limits. Jnom Nominal value of inertia of VSM.
The controller is implemented using dSPACE1103.
Lf Coupling inductor of ESS-inverter.
Index Terms—Energy Storage System (ESS), frequency regula- Ls Coupling inductor of VSM.
tion, microgrid dynamics, rate of change of frequency (RoCoF), re-
newable energy integration, synthetic inertia, virtual synchronous
machine (VSM).
I. INTRODUCTION
LOBAL climate change concerns have put emphasis on

J
NOMENCLATURE

Combined moment of inertia of generator and turbine.

G alternative energy sources. However, the grid-penetration
of renewable energy sources, such as solar PV or wind en-
ergy system, which are increasingly replacing the conventional
power plants based on large synchronous generators, leads to
Manuscript received December 30, 2017; revised March 22, 2018 and June
19, 2018; accepted August 2, 2018. Date of publication August 19, 2018; date of a reduction of the total inertia of the system. While generators
current version December 12, 2018. Paper 2017-PSEC-1278.R2. presented at used in the wind-electric power conversion still have the inertia-
the 2016 IEEE 7th Power India International Conference, Bikaner, India, Nov. factor, the solar PV is practically devoid of such property. Both
25–27, and approved for publication in the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY
APPLICATIONS by the Power Systems Engineering Committee of the IEEE Indus- are, however, connected through power electronic interface, the
try Applications Society. This work was supported in part by the Department of overload capability of which acts as a final limiting factor. As a
Science & Technology (DST), India, through a project entitled UK India Clean consequence, higher rate of change of frequency (RoCoF) can
Energy Research Institute (UKICERI) (DST/RCUK/JVCCE/2015/02 (C)), and
in part by the EPSRC funded Joint Clean Energy Research Centre (JUICE) be observed during sudden and large disturbances in the system
(EP/P003605/1) which is a joint collaboration initiative between DST, India (either due to fault, or sudden disconnection/collapse of large
and EPSRC, U.K. (Corresponding author: Upama Bose.) generator or connection/disconnection of large load in the sys-
U. Bose and C. Chakraborty are with the Department of Electrical Engi-
neering, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur 721302, India tem). Therefore, there is a strong motivation for improving the
(e-mail:,upama16@gmail.com; chakraborty@ieee.org). way in which the power system with low inertia could provide
S. K. Chattopadhyay is with the Centre for Energy Studies, Indian Insti- primary frequency restoration.
tute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi 110016, India (e-mail:, sumitkc1981@
gmail.com). During the last decade, several concepts for virtual syn-
B. Pal is with the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Impe- chronous machines (VSMs) have been presented with different
rial College London, London SW72BT, U.K. (e-mail:,b.pal@imperial.ac.uk). names and different practical implementations. Virtual inertia
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. is the concept of mimicking inertial behavior of a traditional
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TIA.2018.2866047 generator system. In [1], a detailed nonlinear mathematical

0093-9994 © 2018 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.

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 112 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, VOL. 55, NO. 1, JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2019

model for this VSM implementation has been derived. The time the analogy of the electrostatic energy stored in the dc-link ca-
domain behavior of synchronous machines (SMs), in terms of pacitor with that of the kinetic energy stored in the rotating
inertia response and damping, is modeled by the traditional masses of the synchronous generator. However, to derive syn-
swing equation [2]. The amount of virtual inertia that can be thetic inertia from these methods, large capacitor size and wider
added to the system by a single VSM unit can also be real- range of dc-bus voltage margin should be ensured. The work
ized by proper Energy Storage Systems (ESS) [3]. On the other presented in [20] utilizes ESS for providing a short-term active
hand, [4]–[6] describe the advantage of the short response time power support, particularly for preventing load shedding due to
(in milliseconds) of modern ESS to improve the dynamic perfor- transient declines in frequency. The work in [21] proposes the
mance of isolated power systems just after a sudden imbalance option to use different energy storage mix to combat frequency
between generation and demand. For that the sizing of the en- deviation problem.
ergy storage elements has to be properly calculated depending This paper proposes a new frequency regulation concept for
on how much dynamic support is required and for how long. a stand-alone microgrid. For such purpose, a simple microgrid,
The work presented in [7] introduces the aspect that the primary having one VSM, one load, and an ESS-fed inverter, is
frequency control depends on the relation between frequency considered. When there is change in load (decrease/increase),
and the state of charge (SoC) of the energy storage, while the the frequency undergoes quick variation, even in case of system
secondary control changes power output depending on the fre- with high inertia. This is of course severe for low-inertia
quency signal. It has been shown in [8] and [9] that the amount of systems. Hence, it is extremely important to fast estimate the
inertia supplied by the inverter-based source operating with tra- grid frequency. All methods [standard phase locked loop (PLL)
ditional droop can be neglected, whereas inverter-based sources techniques, Kalman filter, etc.] proposed so far are computation-
contribute mostly to damping of electromechanical modes. Elec- intensive and those are also not able to estimate frequency
tromechanical modes of synchronous generator-based sources sufficiently quickly. In this paper, a new frequency estimation
and power modes of inverter-based sources are critical for sys- technique is proposed, simulated and experimentally validated.
tem stability. A VSM-based electric vehicle charger [10] is Frequency regulation and restoration are done through active
shown to contribute to the spinning reserve and the frequency power control. This is demonstrated in this paper by injecting
regulation of the power system. The control strategy described pulse active power in proportion to the frequency deviation
in [11] combines the effect of swing equation in the modification by means of a simple proportional control mechanism. The
of the conventional droop control. This results in reduction of provision of having multiple type energy storages (of different
not only the RoCoF, but also the maximal deviation of frequency time-scales) is also discussed. The paper is organized as follows:
with respect to the nominal value. Here, the RoCoF depends on Section I introduces the motivation and challenge associated
the value of the chosen virtual inertia. So, to limit the RoCoF with frequency regulation in microgrid. Section II describes the
to a decent value, much higher value of virtual inertia constant system configuration and modeling. The controller structures
should be chosen. Apart from VSM, in another control method- are shown in Section III. The simulation platform is developed in
ology, the output power of the PV generator itself is controlled MATLAB/Simulink and the results are shown and discussed in
to maintain the system frequency by keeping some portion of Section IV. Experimental validation is carried out efficiently
the PV output as a reserve [12]. This can eliminate the usage which is an extended version of the work shown in [22],
of costly storage units like battery. Deloading the PV, i.e., op- which is presented in Section V. The results clearly show the
eration below maximum power point to provide a reserve is an effectiveness of the control algorithm.
economical solution. However, a trade-off lies between the cost
of additional PV unit having the reserve features inbuilt and cost II. PROPOSED SYSTEM DESCRIPTION
of battery unit. Also, deloading of PV reserve is not an optimum
solution. The work presented in [13] introduces how virtual iner- A. Schematic Representation of the Overall System
tia can be emulated through dc-link voltage control and PV array The motivation of the work is to improve the frequency regu-
generation adjustment. Improved control techniques for provid- lation of the microgrid. A stand-alone grid having low inertia is
ing frequency support in wind farms (WFs) through synthetic considered. In view of this, the system is modeled by an SM pro-
inertial behaviour, are also reported in some of the recent liter- grammed as VSM, a parallel energy storage connected inverter
ature. Few can be pointed out as wind turbine generators level and load. The modeling of VSM adds flexibility to the system
torsional oscillation damping control, low-frequency oscillation to work with various ratings and inertia constants of SMs or
adaptive damping control to enhance damping characteristic of diesel generator without an actual machine, which would have
the wind farm (WF) [14] and linear quadratic regulator to ob- been a limitation. The inverter is paralleled with the SM with
tain the optimum control trajectory [15]. Some researchers have the help of PLL synchronization. Considering the fact that a mi-
also focused on injecting virtual inertia by means of adding crogrid is prone to occurrence of unbalances and disturbances, a
Lithium-ion supercapacitors in the dc link of the doubly-fed in- double second-order generalized integrator PLL (DSOGI-PLL)
duction generator (DFIG) power electronic conversion system [23] is used for the purpose. The system configuration is shown
to increase extra energy storage capability [16]. Some authors in Fig. 1. The VSM is implemented in simulation and laboratory
have proposed inertia emulation from electrostatic energy stored prototype by using a dc source and a corresponding three-phase
in the dc-link capacitor of high-voltage direct current (HVDC) voltage source converter (VSC). VSM rating is chosen same as
system [17]–[19]. The inertia constant has been derived from the maximum load demand of the system considered, whereas

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BOSE et al.: NOVEL METHOD OF FREQUENCY REGULATION IN MICROGRID 113

Fig. 2. Control diagram of VSM.

Fig. 1. System configuration.

the power rating of the ESS-inverter is so chosen to emphasize

the fact that the ESS-inverter should be used to handle the tran-
sient pulsed power just at the instant of a load change to arrest
the sudden large frequency deviation and also the RoCoF.
In steady-state condition, the power delivered by the inverter
connected to the energy storage reduces to zero; meanwhile, the
VSM can take up all the load power. In this way, the frequency
regulation in a microgrid due to a disturbance from the load-side,
Fig. 3. Decoupled current control of ESS-inverter.
can be efficiently dealt with.

B. VSM Modeling III. CONTROLLER STRUCTURES

The emulation of the VSM is based on the conventional swing A. VSM Control Strategy
equation of a SM, combined with the equation of droop mech-
anism. The basic equation of motion is as follows [24]: The block diagram shown in Fig. 2 depicts the control strat-
egy of inertia emulation of the power converter modeled to
dωm behave like that of a conventional SM. The controller includes
J = Ta = Tm − Te − Dωm . (1)
dt the inertia algorithm which is executed in the form of a swing
As the motivation here is to study the effect of inertia, the equation [26]. The droop control and governor action are re-
influence of damping is neglected. Now, considering a 2-pole sponsible for frequency control. In this way the control strategy
machine, the following simplified equation can be written: acts for restoring the frequency back to nominal value after a
dωr sudden drop for any increase in load. The terminal voltage con-
Jωr = Pm − P e . (2) trol is performed by the VSM controller as shown in Fig. 2. The
dt
generated frequency, ωr serves as the fundamental frequency
On the other hand, the operating principle of droop control
reference for the inverter; the nominal frequency considered in
can be described by the following equation [25]:
this study is 2 ∗ π ∗ 50 rad/s and ma is the reference modulating
1 signal. These two parameters are used to generate reference for
ωr = − (Pe − Po ) + ωo . (3)
kp the PWM of the VSC switches.
Now, combining the conventional droop equation and the swing
equation, the following equation governing the VSM-dynamics B. ESS-Inverter Control Strategy
can be obtained: The scheme used here to control the ESS-inverter is voltage
dωr oriented controlled (VOC) [27], commonly known as “p–q con-
Jωr = Po + kp (ωo − ωr ) − Pe (4)
dt trol.” The term “p–q control” indicates the independent control
where, of active and reactive power of the inverter by means of decou-
pled control of d-axis and q-axis currents. This is based on the
Pm = Po + kp (ωo − ωr ). (5) transformation between abc and dq frames. For implementing

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 114 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, VOL. 55, NO. 1, JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2019

Fig. 4. DSOGI PLL. (a) Overall block diagram. (b) Detailed diagram for single phase SOGI PLL (applicable to both SOGI PLL-α and SOGI PLL-β blocks).

TABLE I during the event of frequency fluctuation till its restoration to

DSOGI PLL PARAMETERS
allowable range.
1) Frequency Controller: The d-axis current reference, id ref ,
which represents the active power to be fed by the ESS-converter
system, is generated by a proportional controller. This perfor-
mance of the ESS-inverter is similar to injecting synthetic inertia
into a weak grid. The amount of pulsed power injection based
on frequency deviation is determined by a high-gain propor-
this control strategy, the load voltage is measured and the in- tional controller. This helps to avoid the oscillatory response
stantaneous phase angle of the voltage vector is detected using usually observed due to multiple PI controllers in a given sys-
PLL for voltage orientation. This angle is used for the trans- tem. Though it is possible to improve the system dynamics by
formation between reference (abc to dq and vice versa) frames. properly tuning the PI controllers, however, it is difficult to com-
Practically, the load voltage, especially, in a microgrid, may pletely mitigate the system oscillations. Also it is important to
contain harmonics and unbalances. That is why DSOGI-PLL note that, even if the ESS inverter would have been controlled by
model [23] is used in this case for synchronization purposes. a properly tuned PI controller, it would continue to inject certain
The load voltage vector is aligned with the d-axis, resulting amount of power in steady-state due to the integral part of the
the q-axis component of the load voltage vector to be zero. controller. In that case, some additional suitable control action
This action is performed by the DSOGI-PLL, taking account is necessary to smoothly ramp down the integrator output to
of the positive and negative sequence voltages that can result zero, once frequency is restored within the acceptable range. In
from unbalances. The implementation diagram of DSOGI-PLL the proposed controller only a proportional constant is enough
is displayed in Fig. 4 and the corresponding parameters are listed to solve the above mentioned issue. Thus, due to any mismatch
in Table I. With this VOC strategy, the three-phase line currents between generation and demand, if there is any frequency drop,
of the ESS-inverter are measured and transformed into d and q the frequency control loop is activated and a proportionate ac-
components. The decoupled control of these two components, tive power reference is generated by the proposed controller to
id and iq renders an effective means to independently control mitigate the sudden frequency change.
the active and reactive power-flows, respectively. These, id and Here, it is assumed that the speed feedback from the VSM can
iq , are compared with, id ref and iq ref and the errors are fed to directly be fed to the ESS-inverter for power flow control. The
corresponding PI controllers. The output of the PI controllers, motivation behind taking the speed feedback from the VSM to
with feed forward terms, generates the voltage reference for the estimate the system-frequency comes from the observation that
dedicated converter used with energy storage for frequency sta- frequency measurement method by observing the grid voltage
bilization as shown in Fig. 3. This controller is activated only (using PLL) demands few cycles to accurately detect frequency

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BOSE et al.: NOVEL METHOD OF FREQUENCY REGULATION IN MICROGRID 115

TABLE II
SIMULATION SYSTEM PARAMETERS

Fig. 5. System frequency measurement by DSOGI-PLL.

change because of PLL’s own dynamics and controller gains.

This frequency tracking gets more delayed in a microgrid due to
higher distortion in the grid voltage. For example, a well-tuned
second-order generalized integrator PLL (SOGI-PLL) with its
parameters given in Table I and its block diagram illustrated
in Fig. 4, will have frequency response as shown in Fig. 5.
Clearly, it can be seen that the PLL adds finite amount of de-
lay to synchronize. This delays the frequency control action to
such an extent that the frequency regulation through frequency
estimation using PLL becomes impossible during transient con-
ditions. That is why the measured speed from VSM controller
is used for generating the active power reference to regulate
the frequency. This speed gives corresponding information of
the system-frequency. Hence, the frequency response is im-
proved by proper transient power handling capability of the Fig. 6. Frequency dynamics of VSM.
ESS-converter. Once the frequency restoration starts from the
frequency controller of the VSM, the active power fed by the
ESS-converter starts to decrease and that of the VSM rises. In
the steady state, when the frequency is brought back to nominal
value, the power output of the ESS-inverter is settled at zero and
in the process, VSM gradually takes up the total load demand.

IV. SIMULATION RESULTS

Simulations have been performed in MATLAB/Simulink to
verify the virtual inertia algorithm and also to test the controller
for frequency regulation. The system parameters are listed in
Table II. The dynamic behavior of the weak grid is observed by
Fig. 7. Improved frequency dynamics due to proposed controller for different
switching a 3 kW load to a generation system. The generation ratings of ESS inverter.
system consists of a 3 kVA virtual synchronous generator to
emulate the inertial characteristics of a conventional alternator,
in parallel with a VSC connected to an energy reserve. To check Next, the p–q controlled inverter is connected in parallel to the
the effectiveness of the proposed control algorithm, first only the VSM and both participate dynamically to control the frequency.
VSM supplies the load. The frequency dynamics for this case The proposed proportional control algorithm evidently improves
can be observed from Fig. 6. It can be seen that the frequency the frequency dynamics of the grid as can be observed in Fig. 7.
drops up to 49.39 Hz for J = Jnom for VSM of 3 kVA rating. It can be seen clearly that as the rating of the inverter is increased,
Also, the RoCoF is observed to be 2.71 Hz/s, which can be quite the frequency profile will have improved dynamics. Here, it
detrimental for the mechanical structure of rotary machines or should be stated that the nadir of the frequency response depends
other electrical equipments. It can be pointed out that as the SM mostly on the rating of the proposed ESS-inverter. Thus, it is
is modeled with VSM, there is a flexibility over the control of possible to achieve an inertial support to arrest/limit frequency
inertia of the machine as depicted in Fig. 6 with two different J deviations or control RoCoF by properly controlling the inver-
values. For a higher value of J, the frequency drop is lesser and ter with this algorithm. The waveform of modulating signal for
RoCoF is better. The governor mechanism of the VSM restores VSM control for the case where ESS-inverter rating is chosen
the frequency to nominal value. 10% of the total system load, is shown in Fig. 8. From the figure,

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 116 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, VOL. 55, NO. 1, JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2019

Fig. 11. Power curve of VSM for different ratings of ESS-inverter.

TABLE III
EFFECT OF ESS-INVERTER RATING ON FREQUENCY RESPONSE
Fig. 8. Modulating signal m a for VSM.

Fig. 9. Power curve of p–q controlled ESS-inverter for different ratings.

Fig. 12. Peak power handled by p–q controlled inverter during changeover of
rating from 50% to 10%.

for its different ratings to serve the purpose of frequency profile

improvement. Thus, the virtual inertial support is enhanced with
increase in inverter rating and vice-versa. Here, the percentage
of inverter rating is expressed with respect to the total load
capacity of the grid that is considered for this study.
Next, few simulation results are displayed to propose a hybrid
Fig. 10. Maximum current handled by p–q controlled inverter for different use of energy storage-mix to combat the frequency deviation.
ratings. Fig. 12 shows the power curve of the p–q controlled inverter
when a switch-over action is adopted to change the power han-
dling of the inverter from 50% to 10% at 6 s. The real essence
clearly the change in the time period of the modulating signal of this is to propose to utilize available energy storages (ultraca-
indicates the change in frequency. The active power shared by pacitors, batteries, etc.) properly at appropriate timing instants
the ESS-inverter and the VSM are displayed in Figs. 9 and 11, during any frequency regulation problem. It can be noted from
respectively. The ESS-inverter is aptly modeled to feed required Fig. 12 that the initial active power boost can be achieved by
power during transient condition which decays to zero once the use of ultracapacitors along with batteries, which is de-
the frequency is stabilized to the desired value. The VSM is noted by the chosen higher initial rating (50%) of the inverter.
responsible for supplying the full power demand in steady-state Once the primary frequency regulation has been initiated, the
as can be observed from Fig. 11. The time domain plot of ultracapacitors may be cutoff from the system and the rest re-
phase current of the ESS-inverter for different ratings can be quired power can be provided by the battery, which is denoted
obtained from Fig. 10. It is obvious that the maximum current by the chosen lower rating (10%). Similar effect is observed in
handled by the inverter is more at a higher rating. Table III case of inverter current in Fig. 13. The transition of delivered-
lists the comparison of the performance of the ESS-inverter power by the VSM due to the mentioned changeover can be

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BOSE et al.: NOVEL METHOD OF FREQUENCY REGULATION IN MICROGRID 117

Fig. 13. Phase current dynamics of ESS-inverter during changeover of rating

from 50% to 10%.
Fig. 16. Estimated energy requirement when changeover of ESS-inverter
rating is considered from 50% to 10%.

Fig. 14. Peak power handled by VSM during changeover of ESS-inverter

from 50% to 10% rating.

Fig. 17. Hardware prototype: 1, 2, 3- Coupling inductor for ESS-inverter, 4-

coupling inductors for VSM, 5- Current sensor board for ESS-inverter, 6- Cur-
rent sensor board for VSM, 7- Voltage sensor board, 8- dSPACE1103 controller,
9- ESS-inverter assembly, 10- VSM assembly, 11- Oscilloscope.

V. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
Fig. 15. Frequency dynamics during changeover of ESS-inverter rating from The experimental validation is carried out in the laboratory
50% to 10%.
using dSPACE1103. The setup of hardware prototype is dis-
played in Fig. 17. The controller implementation is done with a
fixed step size of 50 μs.
observed in Fig. 14. The effect on system frequency for this The system specification for hardware implementation is
changeover can be seen in Fig. 15. listed in Table IV. Three different cases have been considered
The energy requirement from the ESS can be estimated from to show the effectiveness of the algorithm with a step change in
Fig. 16. Clearly, energy required for the first half of the response resistive load of 1.5 kW. These are as follows:
is about 3400 J, which can be obtained by having properly 1) Case-1: System performance with only VSM.
designed banks of ultracapacitors and batteries. This helps to 2) Case-2: System performance with ESS-inverter in parallel
restrict the energy requirement from the battery. From Fig. 12, with VSM. This experimentation is done by limiting the
it is found that battery has supplied a peak power of 250 W, rating of the ESS-inverter to 10%, 50%, and 100% of the
while ultacapacitor and battery together are estimated to handle total load of the system, consecutively.
a peak power of about 1400 W. If only battery would have 3) Case-3: A changeover of the limiter of the ESS-inverter’s
been used for the purpose of frequency regulation, the specific power injection capability, is made to show the possibility
energy requirement for a battery bank would have been much of using two different time-scale ESS.
more. In this way, the fast transient response property of the From Fig. 18, it can be found that with only VSM in the
ultracapacitors can be utilized and the battery capacity and cost system, the frequency falls upto 49 Hz, whereas with 10%
can also be reduced. rated ESS-inverter it is improved by 0.2 Hz. With increased

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 118 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, VOL. 55, NO. 1, JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2019

TABLE IV
HARDWARE SYSTEM PARAMETERS

Fig. 20. Experimental results of injected active power by ESS-inverter during

step change in load for different ratings, respectively. (a) 10%. (b) 50%. (c)
100%.

Fig. 18. Experimental results of frequency dynamics with a step change in

load. (a) With only VSM. (b) With 10% rated ESS-inverter.

Fig. 21. Experimental results of injected active power by VSM during step
change in load for different ratings of ESS-inverter, respectively. (a) 10%. (b)
50%. (c) 100%.

Fig. 19. Experimental results of frequency dynamics with a step change in

load. (a) With 50% rated ESS-inverter. (b) With 100% rated ESS-inverter.

energy storage rating, the frequency can be further improved

upto 49.55 Hz and 49.75 Hz, for 50% and 100% rating of
ESS-inverter, respectively, as shown in Fig. 19. It can be
easily inferred that the frequency decline which was about
1 Hz without ESS-inverter, can be limited to only 0.25 Hz
by utilizing proper rating of ESS. Therefore, the rating of
ESS has direct impact on how much frequency deviation can
be arrested. In essence, the storage system is contributing
some synthetic inertia to the system which is guided by its
capacity and charging/discharging rates. Figs. 20 and 21 Fig. 22. Oscilloscope waveforms: VSM-inverter output PWM voltage (CH1,
display the injected active power by the ESS-inverter and Scale:500 V/div), ESS-inverter output PWM voltage (CH2, Scale:500 V/div),
the VSM during the instant of load change, respectively. As line-to-line load voltage (CH3, Scale:500 V/div), line current (CH4, Scale:5
A/div), time (Scale: 5 ms/div).
it can be seen from these experimental results that at any

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BOSE et al.: NOVEL METHOD OF FREQUENCY REGULATION IN MICROGRID 119

Fig. 23. Experimental results during a changeover of ESS-inverter rating from

50% to 10% at t = 3.5 s. (a) Frequency dynamics. (b) ESS-inverter injected
active power. (c) VSM injected active power. Fig. 25. Oscilloscope waveforms during a changeover of ESS-inverter rating
from 50% to 10% at 3.2 s: Voltage across resistive load (CH1, Scale: 500 V/div),
Output current of VSM(CH2, Scale:5 A/div), Output current of ESS inverter
(CH3, Scale: 2 A/div), Load current(CH4, Scale:5 A/div), time (Scale: 1 s/div).

Fig. 24. Oscilloscope waveforms during a changeover of ESS-inverter rat-

ing from 50% to 10% at 3.2 s: injected active power by VSM (CH1, Scale:
400 W/div), injected active power by ESS inverter (CH2, Scale:400 W/div), Fig. 26. Indication of estimated energy utilized from ESS during changeover
frequency profile (CH3, Scale: 0.2 Hz/div), time (Scale: 1 s/div). of ESS-inverter rating from 50% to 10% at t = 3.5 s.

point of time, the sum of the pulsed power supplied by the pulled towards zero. A view of oscilloscope snapshot for this
ESS-inverter and the power supported by the VSM equals the case-study is provided in Fig. 24. It can be found that at around
total load power, which is similar to the simulation results 1 s, the load change has been made. Consequently, the frequency
as well. The steady-state waveforms of inverter output volta- drops upto nearly 49.55 Hz (for 50% rated ESS-inverter). The
ges, line-to-line voltage across load and load current is shown ESS-inverter injects 50% of the total load power instantly,
in Fig. 22. To display the potential of the algorithm to switch while VSM supplies the balance power for a constant load. At
between different ESS for their optimized utilization, a tran- 3.2 s a changeover is made of the ESS-inverter rating from 50%
sition of the power rating of ESS-inverter is carried out from to 10%. This may represent a case when initial power (i.e., 50%
its 50% rating to only 10%. The corresponding waveforms are of Pess ) may be fed by ultracapacitors and batteries, followed
displayed in Fig. 23. As soon as the load change took place, the by only batteries when this changeover is made to 10% of Pess .
ESS-inverter instantly delivered 50% of the total load power, As a result of the changeover, a small dip (less than 0.05 Hz)
i.e., 750 W. As a result, the initial power delivered by VSM in frequency can be observed. Afterwards frequency gradually
is also about 750 W, for a constant load power. Gradually as restores to nominal value. The corresponding dynamics in
frequency approached the nominal value, the power output of the power curves of the VSM (CH1) and ESS-inverter (CH2)
the ESS-inverter started to decrease and VSM started taking are also visible from Fig. 24. The corresponding dynamics
over the load. At t = 3.5 s, the rating of ESS-inverter is switched observed in load voltage, VSM output current, ESS-inverter
to 10%, which causes a little frequency dip. Afterwards, as the output current, and load current can be observed in Fig. 25. It
reference current of the ESS-inverter comes out of saturation, can be seen that the load voltage is maintained constant and for
the frequency regulation is carried out by VSM which supplies a constant load current, the ESS current initially picks up and
the full load eventually, the output power of ESS-inverter being gradually comes down to its 10% rating and finally decays to

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 120 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, VOL. 55, NO. 1, JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2019

zero; whereas the VSM current is initially lesser and it gradually [7] D. Wu, F. Tang, T. Dragicevic, J. M. Guerrero, and J. C. Vasquez, “Co-
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BOSE et al.: NOVEL METHOD OF FREQUENCY REGULATION IN MICROGRID 121

Upama Bose (S’17) received the B.Tech. degree in Chandan Chakraborty (S’92–M’97–SM’01–F’15)
electrical engineering from the Narula Institute of received the B.E. and M.E degrees in electrical en-
Technology, Kolkata, India and the M. Tech. degree gineering from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India,
in electrical engineering with specialization in power in 1987 and 1989, respectively, and the Ph.D degrees
electronics and drives from the Vellore Institute of from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur,
Technology, Vellore, India, in 2012 and 2015, re- Kharagpur, India and Mie University, Tsu, Japan, in
spectively. She is currently working toward the Ph.D. 1997 and 2000, respectively.
degree at the Department of Electrical Engineering, He is currently a Professor with the Department
Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharag- of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technol-
pur, India. ogy Kharagpur. His research interest includes power
Her research interests include power electronic converters, motor drives, electric vehicles, and re-
converters, renewable energy, and microgrids. newable energy.
Dr. Chakraborty was the recipient of the JSPS Fellowship to work at the
University of Tokyo during 2000–2002. He was also the recipient of the Bimal
Bose award in power electronics in 2006 from the IETE, India. He has regularly
contributed to IES conferences such as IECON, ISIE, and ICIT as Technical
Program Chair/Track Chair. He is an ADCOM member of the IEEE Industrial
Electronics Society. He is one of the Associate Editors for the IEEE TRANS-
ACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS and IEEE INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS
Sumit K. Chattopadhyay (M’17) received the B.E.
MAGAZINE and an Editor for the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SUSTAINABLE EN-
degree in electrical engineering from Burdwan Uni-
ERGY. He is the Founding Editor-in-Chief for IE Technology News, a web-only
versity, Burdwan, India, in 2004 and the M.Tech.
degree in industrial electrical systems from the Na- publication for IEEE Industrial Electronics Society. He is a Fellow of Indian
National Academy of Engineering.
tional Institute of Technology Durgapur, Durgapur,
India, in 2006.
He has nearly five years of industrial experience
working in the areas of power electronic converters Bikash Pal (M’00–SM’02–F’13) received the B.E.E.
for renewable energy, naval applications, and HVdc. (with Hons.) degree from Jadavpur University,
He has proposed a new series of multilevel inverter Kolkata, India, the M.E. degree from the Indian In-
topology using level doubling network. Until January stitute of Science, Bangalore, India, and the Ph.D.
2010, he was with Larsen and Toubro Ltd. as a power electronic system designer degree from Imperial College London, London, U.K,
at Navi Mumbai, India, for more than three years. From January 2010 to March in 1990, 1992, and 1999, respectively, all in electrical
2015, he was a full-time Research Scholar with the Department of Electrical engineering.
Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. There he worked on He is currently a Professor with the Department of
multilevel inverter topology, modulation, control and applications. From March Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Imperial Col-
2015 to July 2016, he has served as a Scientist of HVdc grid system R&D with lege London. His research interests include renew-
ABB Global Industries Service Ltd. in India. From July 2016 to June 2018, able energy modeling and control, state estimation,
he was a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Department of Electrical Engineering, and power system dynamics. He was the Editor-in-Chief for the IEEE TRANS-
Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. He is currently an Assistant Professor ACTIONS ON SUSTAINABLE ENERGY (2012–2017) and the Editor-in-Chief for
with the Centre for Energy Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New the IET GENERATION, TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION (2005–2012) and is
Delhi, India. Fellow of IEEE for his contribution to power system stability and control.

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