Inverter-based Control to Enhance the Resiliency of a Distribution System

Due to the increase in the integration of renewable energy to the grid, there is a critical need for varying the existing methods and techniques for grid operation. With increased renewable energy, mainly wind and photovoltaics, there is a reduction in inertia as the percentage of inverter-based resources is increasing. This can bring about an issue with the maintenance and operation of the grid with respect to frequency and voltage. Thus, the ability of inverters to regulate the voltage and frequency becomes significant. Under normal operation of the system, the ability of the inverters to support the grid frequency and voltage while following the grid is sufficient. However, the operation of the inverters during a resiliency mode, under which there is an extended outage of the utility system, will require the inverter functionality to go beyond support and actually maintain the voltage and frequency as done by synchronous machines, acting as the grid-forming inverter. This project focuses on the operation of grid forming sources based on the virtual synchronous generator to regulate the voltage and frequency in the absence of the grid voltage through decentralized control of the inverters in the distribution feeder. With the most recent interconnection standard for the distributed generation, IEEE-1547 2018, the inverter-based generation can be used for this purpose. The simulations are performed in the Simulink environment and the case studies are done on the IEEE 13 node test-feeder.