Unified Equivalent-circuit Models for Voltage-source Inverters that Capture Averaged Dynamics and Power-flow Solutions in Distribution Networks

Unified Equivalent-circuit Models for Voltage-source Inverters that Capture Averaged Dynamics and Power-flow Solutions in Distribution Networks

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This paper demonstrates how three-phase distribution networks composed of voltage-source inverters can be modeled as a single unified equivalent-circuit network realized with familiar circuit elements. Such a model is derived by representing all physical- and control-subsystem dynamics as equivalent circuits. Two versions are put forth: the first captures averaged dynamics; while the second is a steady-state version of the first and it captures the power-flow solution in sinusoidal steady state. The main challenge in undertaking such an effort is presented by the fact that inverters are composed of subsystems (filters, pulse width modulators, phase-locked loops, controllers, direct-quadrature reference-frame transformations) that belong to multiple domains (physical and control). We demonstrate how all these constituent subsystems can be transcribed as equivalent circuits which then promote a single and unified circuit model that captures network physical- and control-layer dynamics. Numerical simulations for a representative distribution network compare results from the averaged model and the steady-state model with high-fidelity switch-level simulations. The results establish the validity of the circuit-based models and the computational benefits of the proposed approach.

https://aisel.aisnet.org/hicss-54/es/monitoring/10