The 6th International Conference on Renewable Power Generation (RPG)

19–20 October 2017

Abnormality in power system transient stability control of BESS/STATCOM

Jun Liu1, Can Su1, Xu Wang1, Wanliang Fang1, Shuanbao Niu2, Lin Cheng2
1
Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Smart Grid, School of Electrical Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, Shaanxi 710049,
People’s Republic of China
2
Northwest Subsection of State Grid Corporation of China, Xi’an 710048, People’s Republic of China
E-mail: [email protected]

Published in The Journal of Engineering; Received on 9th October 2017; Accepted on 1st November 2017

Abstract: To solve energy and environment crisis, large amounts of renewable energy power generation has been integrated to modern power
grids, resulting in power quality decline, frequency fluctuation, and stability deterioration. In this case, advanced control and regulation means
for power systems are needed. Static synchronous compensator (STATCOM) is a shunt-connected flexible AC transmission system device that
is often used for reactive power control. When associated with battery energy storage systems (BESSs), the adjustment capabilities of
STATCOM can be extended to four quadrants. Therefore, the hybrid BESS/STATCOM can influence modern power system operation. A
system-level electromechanical transient mathematical model for BESS/STATCOM is established, based on the circuit structure of battery,
three-phase bridge converter and a low-pass filter. Then, a typical real and reactive power coordinated control strategy based on the
double-loop scheme is developed for BESS/STATCOM. Finally, the influence of BESS/STATCOM on the system’s transient stability is
tested, according to simulations conducted on IEEE 3-machine 9-bus standard system. Simulation results show that BESS/STATCOM can
improve the transient stability under charging state, but abnormality has been found that BESS/STATCOM might not alleviate the angle sta-
bility and voltage drop as much as those in the discharging state.

1 Introduction this type of FACTS device has not yet been developed well.
Since the output real power and reactive power can be controlled
To solve the contradiction between electricity demand growth and
independently by regulating the decoupled current components;
environmental pollution, many countries in the world have strength-
therefore, this paper mainly focuses on the influence of BESS/
ened the development and utilisation of renewable energy sources
STATCOM on the transient stability of power systems. A novel
such as wind power and photovoltaic power [1]. However, these
real and reactive power coordinated control method based on the
types of new energy power generations obviously have a negative
double-loop scheme is proposed for BESS/STATCOM to
impact on the operation of the power systems, due to their
enhance power system transient stability. Simulations on IEEE
random, fluctuating and unstable characteristics. Therefore, effect-
3-machine 9-bus test system integrated with BESS/STATCOM
ive measures to improve the transient stability of the power
are performed to testify the effectiveness of the proposed control
system are of great significance.
method, under different operation states of the BESS/STATCOM.
Static synchronous compensator (STATCOM) is a fully con-
trolled flexible AC transmission system (FACTS) component that
is widely used in power systems [2–4]. As a reactive power com- 2 Mathematical modelling of BESS/STATCOM
pensation device, STATCOM shows no real power capability.
The traditional STATCOM has only two possible steady-state oper- The typical topology of BESS/STATCOM is shown in Fig. 1. The
ating modes; it can work in the over-excited state, injecting reactive circuit structure mainly includes a battery, three-phase bridge con-
power into the system, or the under-excited state, consuming react- verter, and the low-pass filter. Since BESS is directly connected to
ive power from the network [5, 6]. Thus, voltage-related problems the capacitor on DC side, the DC side voltage of BESS/STATCOM
can be mitigated [7, 8]. is guaranteed to be approximately constant. Owing to the complex-
Battery energy storage system (BESS) consists of many chemical ity of the mathematical modelling of the device, the following
battery cells connected in series or in parallel [9]. It has the capabil- assumptions are made to derive the model:
ity of providing real power, and also reactive power when integrated
with a voltage-source converter (VSC) converter topology. Under (i) The voltage on AC side is three-phase symmetrical sine wave,
charging mode, BESS converts electricity into chemical energy, regardless of the voltage, and current harmonics.
and stores the energy in batteries. Under discharging mode, BESS (ii) The switching losses of STATCOM are ignored, which means
converts chemical energy back into electrical energy and injects it that no active power is consumed inside the converter.
to the power grid. (iii) The converter switches in the devices are ideal switches,
Compared to STATCOM, integrated BESS/STATCOM has sig- without breakdown during switching operations.
nificantly improved performances [10], and is capable of operating
in four quadrants. However, very limited literatures have begun to Then, the simplified integration circuit of BESS/STATCOM to
investigate the transient behaviour of BESS/STATCOM, only in the outer system can be shown in Fig. 2.
the area of voltage stability [11], supplementary control [12], grid In Fig. 2, v2a, v2b, v2c are the three-phase AC voltages of the
operation [13], and voltage/frequency control [14], the control for system, v1a, vlb, v1c are the output voltages of BESS/STATCOM,

This is an open access article published by the IET under the Creative Commons J. Eng., 2017, Vol. 2017, Iss. 13, pp. 1040–1044
Attribution-NoDerivs License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/) doi: 10.1049/joe.2017.0487
 into the grid are then expressed as

P = 3(vd id + vq iq )/2 = 3Vid /2
(4)
Q = 3(vd iq − vq id )/2 = 3Viq /2

According to the second assumption the switching losses of

STATCOM and real power consumption of converters are
ignored. The real power injected into the system by BESS/
STATCOM should be the same as the output DC power of
BESS, so there are

Vdc Is = 3Vid /2 (5)

Considering the relationship between the bus voltages and the

Fig. 1 Typical topology of BESS/STATCOM
injected currents, the equations for the d-axis and q-axis currents
can be derived

Id = 2P/3vd
(6)
Iq = 2Q/3vq

Using inverse Park transformation, the injected current can be

achieved as
Fig. 2 Simplified grid-integration circuit for BESS/STATCOM ⎧
⎪
⎨ İ = Ix + jIy
   
⎪
Ix −1 Id cos u − sin u Id (7)
⎩ I = P =
Vdc is the output voltage of BESS, Rs is the equivalent resistance of y Iq sin u cos u Iq
BESS, Is is the output current of BESS, and L is the inductance of
the low-pass filter.
A two-level, three-phase bridge VSC model is used to execute
the functionality of STATCOM. The amplitude and the phase of 3 Transient control for BESS/STATCOM
the AC side output voltage are adjusted according to the internal
control strategy so that the BESS/STATCOM device can generate In this paper, a novel double-loop control strategy for BESS/
or absorb the active current or reactive current needed by the STATCOM is proposed, considering the coordination between
power grid to achieve the goal of four-quadrant dynamic the charging operation and reactive compensation functionalities.
compensation. The double closed-loop control scheme is divided into outer
Assume the three-phase circuit of STATCOM on AC side is sym- control loop and inner control loop [15]. The outer control part
metrical, therefore mainly includes voltage and current detection, sampling feedback,
numerical calculation, and regulator design. The output of outer
⎛ ⎞ ⎛ ⎞ ⎛ ⎞ loop determines the real power and reactive power required by
v1a v2a ia the system. The inner control part includes decoupling of variables,
d
⎝ v1b ⎠ − ⎝ v2b ⎠ = L ⎝ ib ⎠ (1) calculation, and closed-loop controller design. The inner loop part
dt
v1c v2c ic realises the adjustment of real power and reactive power by control-
ling the real and reactive current components.
where v2a, v2b, v2c are the reference voltages, with the initial
phase angle θ. For the sake of simplification, the initial phase is 3.1 Steady-state operation
given as 0, the phase difference between v2a, v2b, v2c and v1a, v1b, During steady-state operation, BESS/STATCOM exchanges a
v1c is described by angle δ. certain value of active power with the system, either charging or dis-
Through Park transformation, the mathematical model of the charging. Moreover, the reactive power injected into the system is
VSC converter can be described as typically zero in order to make full use of the device capacity.
Assuming that in steady-state, the real power provided by BESS/
⎧ di STATCOM is P0, then the reference value of real power is
⎪
⎨ L d = v1d − v2d + vLiq
dt Pref = P0. Reactive power reference is Qref = 0, which equals to the
(2) so-called active power and reactive power (PQ) control. In this
⎪
⎩ L diq = v − v + vLi
dt 1q 2q d case, steady-state current reference values are

id ref = 2Pref /3vd
Here, ω represents the rotor angular speed. According to the first as- iq ref = 0
(8)
sumption that the system is symmetrical, only the fundamental
component is taken into account. In this case, i0 = 0, v0 = 0.
Typically, the voltage on AC side of BESS/STATCOM should
be restricted to a certain constant value, there will be
3.2 Transient operation


 If a fault occurs, the bus voltages will drop sharply, which would
vd V
= (3) adversely affect the stability of the power system. The reactive
vq 0
power regulation property of BESS/STATCOM can alleviate the
voltage drop process, that is, suitable reactive power can be pro-
The real power and reactive power of BESS/STATCOM injected vided to support the dynamic voltage recovery.

J. Eng., 2017, Vol. 2017, Iss. 13, pp. 1040–1044 This is an open access article published by the IET under the Creative Commons
doi: 10.1049/joe.2017.0487 Attribution-NoDerivs License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/)
Fig. 3 Control strategy of the reactive and active power reference values for
the BESS/STATCOM
Fig. 4 State feedback decoupling diagram for the converter
a Reactive power control
b Real power control

In the proposed control method, reactive power control is realised

by controlling the reactive current component of BESS/STATCOM.
The reference value of reactive power is given by the control strat-
egy as shown in Fig. 3a. The voltage controller compares measured
bus voltage vg with reference bus voltage vref, and passes the differ-
ence through proportional–integral (PI) controller. The output result
is used as the reference value of the reactive power. Then, reactive
current reference iqref is obtained as the reactive power reference
divided by bus voltage vref. In this paper, vref refers to the voltage
at the point of common coupling.
When subjected to large disturbances, the system structure and
parameters would change greatly, leading to relative swing
among generating units. A series of changes will break the power
balance between the prime mover and the generator, resulting in
an unbalanced torque on the generator shaft, causing the rotor to ac-
Fig. 5 Synthetic current control scheme for BESS/STATCOM
celerate or decelerate. Therefore, the reference value of the BESS/
STATCOM active current can be calculated according to the differ-
ence between a neighbouring generator speed and its reference
speed. The control strategy is shown in Fig. 3b. 4 Case studies
The following equations show that id is not only related to v1d and
v2d, but also influenced by iq. That is to say, the coupling is intro- The tests are based on IEEE 3-machine 9-bus standard system. The
duced during Park transformation. To facilitate closed-loop topology of the system and the detailed data can be found in [15].
control of the current, it is necessary to introduce state feedback de- One BESS/STATCOM is connected to bus 4 and is named as bus
coupling control. Outputs on d-axis and q-axis after decoupling are 10 in this paper.
The transient simulation programme is coded on MATLAB soft-
⎧ ware. The fault settings are as follows, at t = 1 s, a three-phase short-
 
⎨ vd = Gc (s). id ref − id − vL1 iq circuit fault occurs to one end of a transmission line. At time tl, the
  (9) circuit breakers trip to remove the fault. Then at time t2, breakers
⎩ vq = Gc (s). iq ref − iq − vL1 id reclose, and the system goes back to the state before the failure.
Generators are modelled as the four-order models; loads are
simulated as constant impedance, and the network is described by
According to (9) and the mathematical model of the converter, the the admittance matrix. Through transient simulation programme,
state feedback decoupling diagram can be drawn in Fig. 4. the curves of the variables before and after the fault can be obtained.
Moreover, the final synthetic current control scheme for BESS/ Case 1: Testing of the coordinated control under discharging
STATCOM can be achieved in Fig. 5. state (working as a power source)
After decoupling, there will be no coupling between d-axis and Assuming that BESS/STATCOM works in discharging state, the
q-axis current components in the converter model, which makes steady-state output of BESS/STATCOM is 30 MW, the system base
controller design more convenient. Usually, a PI controller is capacity is 100 MVA. At t = 1 s, a three-phase short-circuit fault
used for converter controller design occurs in line 3 close to bus 7 side. At t = 1.08 s, the circuit breakers
remove the fault. Then, at t = 1.63 s, breakers reclose successfully.
ki The results of the transient simulation are shown in Fig. 6.
Gc (s) = kp + (10) The power angle fluctuations of the three synchronous machines
s
are shown in Figs. 6a and b. In Fig. 6a, the power angle between
generators is consistently increasing, indicating that the original
It can be seen from the current control loop in Fig. 5 that the de- system without BESS/STATCOM is unstable. However, the
coupling of id and iq is fulfilled. Here, idref and iqref represent the ref- power angle swing is gradually attenuated to a constant value in
erence values of active and reactive currents, respectively. The Fig. 6b, once BESS/STATCOM with our novel control method is
decoupled current needs to be divided by kPWM, which is the modu- connected to the system. Thus, BESS/STATCOM is beneficial to
lation ratio of the converter. the transient angle stabilisation of the system.

This is an open access article published by the IET under the Creative Commons J. Eng., 2017, Vol. 2017, Iss. 13, pp. 1040–1044
Attribution-NoDerivs License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/) doi: 10.1049/joe.2017.0487
 Fig. 7 Influence of BESS/STATCOM capacities on transient stability
performance
a Rotor angle curves
b Voltage curves

STATCOM can improve the transient stability of the system to a

greater extent.
Case 3: Testing of the coordinated control under charging state
(working as a load)
Assuming that BESS/STATCOM works in charging state, the
steady-state output of BESS/STATCOM is −30 MW, which
means it is taking in 30 MW real power from the outer system.
At t = 1 s, a three-phase short-circuit fault occurs in line 4, close
to bus 9 side. At t = 1.1 s, the fault was cleared, and then, at
t = 1.6 s, the power breakers reclose successfully. The results of
the transient simulation are shown in Fig. 8.
It can be seen from Fig. 8 that the BESS/STATCOM might not
alleviate the angle swing and transient voltage drop as much as
those in the discharging state (working as a load). After the fault
occurs since the BESS is working under the charging state, and it
has been taking in about 0.3 pu real power. However, during the
Fig. 6 Simulation results for BESS/STATCOM under discharging state
a Rotor angle curve without BESS/STATCOM period of 1–3 s, the power absorbed by BESS drops greatly to
b Rotor angle curve with coordinated control of BESS/STATCOM about 0.2 pu, which shows that the transient Voltage/Frequency
c Voltage curves w/o the BESS/STATCOM (V/F) control cannot absorb the surplus unbalanced real power
d Power outputs of the BESS/STATCOM during the charging state. Therefore, the power angle swing
between the generators increases a bit more at the beginning of
the fault, and the voltage recovery performance is slightly deterio-
rated. Moreover, this phenomenon indicates that abnormality has
It can also be seen in Fig. 6c that for the original system without been found that the BESS/STATCOM with same V/F coordinated
BESS/STATCOM, the voltage amplitude oscillation continues for control strategy, and the transient V/F control might not alleviate
10 s at bus 1. On the contrary, the voltage is able to return to a the angle stability and voltage drop under the charging state for a
stable level gradually with the regulation of BESS/STATCOM. couple of seconds after faults.
As shown in Fig. 6d, BESS/STATCOM is able to provide more However, from 3 to 10 s, it can be seen that the BESS/
reactive power and less real power to the grid after a fault occurs, STATCOM has started to consume more real power to compensate
supporting the power system to operate safely and stably. the speedup of the synchronous generators, which means the coor-
Case 2: Influence of BESS/STATCOM capacities on transient dinated control has taken effect during that period. This demon-
stability performance strates that the transient frequency and voltage control scheme are
Intuitively, the control characteristic of BESS/STATCOM might correct, and it is set to provide less real power and more reactive
be related to the real power output of BESS. In case 2, a BESS/ power during the transient recovery process.
STATCOM with a real power output of 60 MW is connected to From the whole simulation, the abnormality for the transient be-
the system, and other conditions are the same as in case 1. The com- haviour of BESS/STATCOM might be caused by the following
parisons to different BESS capacities are shown in Fig. 7. reasons: (i) the BESS/STATCOM and other static converters
The results show that the actual BESS/STATCOM output power would reduce the system inertia, and thus potentially worsen the
will affect its performance. With a larger real power output, BESS/ transient stability to some extent while working as a load and (ii)

J. Eng., 2017, Vol. 2017, Iss. 13, pp. 1040–1044 This is an open access article published by the IET under the Creative Commons
doi: 10.1049/joe.2017.0487 Attribution-NoDerivs License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/)
 swing and voltage drop for the first several seconds, and two poten-
tial reasons for this abnormality has been analysed. Future work can
be done to improve the transient control schemes for BESS/
STATCOM and static converters used in other renewable energy
integrations.

6 Acknowledgment
This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science
Foundation of China under grant no. 51507126.

7 References

[1] Liu J., Fang W., Zhang X., ET AL.: ‘An improved photovoltaic power
forecasting model with the assistance of Aerosol index data’, IEEE
Trans. Sustainable Energy, 2015, 6, (2), pp. 434–442
[2] Gholipour E., Saadate S.: ‘Improving of transient stability of power
systems using UPFC’, IEEE Trans. Power Deliv., 2005, 20, (2),
pp. 1677–1682
[3] Duan C., Fang W., Jiang L., ET AL.: ‘Adaptive barrier filter line-search
interior point method for optimal power flow with FACTS devices’,
IET Gener. Transm. Distrib., 2015, 9, (16), pp. 2792–2798
[4] Canizares C.A.: ‘Power flow and transient stability models of FACTS
controllers for voltage and angle stability studies’. 2000 IEEE PES
Winter Meeting, 2000, vol. 2, pp. 1447–1454
[5] Muyeen S M., Takahashi R., Murata T., ET AL.: ‘Application of
STATCOM/BESS for wind power smoothening and hydrogen gener-
ation’, Electr. Power Syst. Res., 2009, 79, (2), pp. 365–373
[6] Rao H., Xu S., Zhao Y., ET AL.: ‘Research and application of multiple
STATCOMs to improve the stability of AC/DC power systems in
China southern grid’, IET Gener. Transm. Distrib., 2016, 10, (13),
pp. 3111–3118
[7] Dhanapal S., Anita R.: ‘Voltage and frequency control of stand-alone
self-excited induction generator using a photovoltaic system based
STATCOM’, J. Circuits Syst. Comput., 2016, 25, (4), p. 1650031
[8] Halacli M.G., Demiroren A.: ‘Robust voltage/VAR control using
Fig. 8 Simulation results for BESS/STATCOM under charging state PSO based STATCOM: a case study in Turkey’, Electr. Power
a Rotor angle curves w/o BESS/STATCOM Compon. Syst., 2016, 44, (8), pp. 1–9
b Voltage curves w/o the BESS/STATCOM [9] Kanchanaharuthai A., Chankong V., Loparo K.: ‘Transient stability
c Power outputs of the BESS/STATCOM and voltage regulation in multimachine power systems vis-à-vis
STATCOM and battery energy storage’, IEEE Trans. Power Syst.,
2015, 30, (5), pp. 2404–2416
during the early period of a fault, the transient energy tends to flow [10] Baros S., Ilic M.D.: ‘Multi-objective Lyapunov-based control of a
STATCOM/BESS’. 2015 Innovative Smart Grid Technologies
to the faulted point, where it is directly grounded, which makes the Conf., 2015, vol. 1, pp. 1–5
BESS cannot absorb more real power. Future works might be [11] Renuka T., Kesavarao G.: ‘STATCOM with battery and super capaci-
needed to develop more adaptive control measures to address this tor hybrid energy storage system for enhancement of voltage stabil-
abnormality issue. ity’, Indonesian J. Electr. Eng. Comput. Sci., 2017, 5, (2), pp.
250–259
5 Conclusion [12] Ramirez-Gonzalez M., Castellanos-Bustamante R., Calderon-Guizar
J.G., ET AL.: ‘Coordinated design of fuzzy supplementary controllers
BESS/STATCOM is a new type of FACTS device, composed of for generator and STATCOM voltage regulators using BAT algorithm
BESS and STATCOM, which is potential to improve the operation optimization’, Int. Trans. Electr. Energy Syst., 2016, 29, (9), pp.
1847–1862
and control of power systems. BESS/STATCOM has a four-
[13] Zhang Q., Zhang X., Chang X., ET AL.: ‘Improvement of grid stability
quadrant adjustment capability and can exchange both real and re- of wind-thermal bundled power system by BESS-STATCOM’,
active powers with the outer power system. In this paper, a coordi- Power Capacitor Reactive Power Compensation, 2016, 2, pp. 1–6
nated double-loop control strategy is proposed to adjust the output [14] Park J., Yu J., Kim J., ET AL.: ‘Frequency/voltage regulation with
current of BESS/STATCOM to enhance power system stability. If STATCOM with battery in high voltage transmission system’,
the BESS/STATCOM is in the discharging state before faults, it IFAC-PapersOnLine, 2016, 49, (27), pp. 296–300
[15] Ding K., Liu J., Wang X., ET AL.: ‘Research of active and reactive
would have a positive effect on the transient stability of the power coordinated control method for photovoltaic inverters based
power system. The regulation of BESS/STATCOM is related to on an improved double-loop control scheme’. 2016 China Int.
the real power output. If the BESS/STATCOM works in the char- Conf. Electricity Distribution (CICED 2016), Xi’an, China, 10–13
ging state before faults, it would slightly deteriorate the angle August 2016, vol. 1, pp. 1–5

This is an open access article published by the IET under the Creative Commons J. Eng., 2017, Vol. 2017, Iss. 13, pp. 1040–1044
Attribution-NoDerivs License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/) doi: 10.1049/joe.2017.0487