1342 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 23, NO.

3, MAY 2008

Indirect Current Control Algorithm for Utility

Interactive Inverters in Distributed
Generation Systems
Hyosung Kim, Member, IEEE, Taesik Yu, and Sewan Choi, Senior Member, IEEE

Abstract—Distributed generation (DG) systems should go into While, some DG systems have private emergency load for
intentional islanding operation to back up private emergency loads which the DG system should continuously supply stable elec-
when the main grid is out of electric power. Conventional utility tric power even when the main grid is out of power. This situa-
interactive inverters which are normally operated in current mode
must change their operation into voltage mode to ensure stable
tion is called intentional islanding operation. When intentional
supply voltage for emergency loads when intentional islanding islanding operation occurs, the DG system should be discon-
operation occurs in DG systems. During the transition between nected from main grid for safety, while it continuously supplies
current mode and voltage mode, a serious transient problem stable voltage to emergency load seamlessly.
may occur on the output terminal voltage of utility interactive Conventional utility interactive inverters in a DG system are
inverters. This paper proposes a new inverter system and its con- normally operated by current control mode to inject power to
trol algorithm for seamless transfer during intentional islanding
operation in DG systems. Filter design guidelines and data for
main grids. When intentional islanding operation occurs, the
LCL filters that is appropriate for the proposed control algorithm utility interactive inverter should change its operation mode into
are also presented. voltage control mode to ensure supplying continuous power to
Index Terms—Distributed generation (DG) systems, indirect
private emergency loads. During the mode change, the output
current control, line interactive inverters, seamless transfer. voltage of the DG system may become unstable because of tran-
sient phenomena.
The voltage stability will be worsen when the main grid is
I. INTRODUCTION tripped by abrupt faults such as voltage sags/swells or black out.
When islanding detection is delayed by such factors as non-de-
ODERN society widely depends on fossil energy that
M speeds up glove warming by emitting environmental pol-
lutants such as CO , NO , SO gases, etc. Renewable energy
tection zone (NDZ), communications between sensors and con-
trollers, or signal processing of controllers, etc, the DG system
will lost control on its output terminal voltage during the delay
is a good remedy to decrease environmental problems resulting
time.
from fossil energy. Renewable energy generation systems range
This paper presents a new inverter system and control algo-
from 1 kW to several hundred MW level which are normally
rithm for intentional islanding operation in DG systems. Even
connected to a main power grid as a distributed generation (DG)
the islanding detection is delayed comparatively long time, pro-
system [1].
posed utility interactive inverters can supply seamless stable
DG systems fall in islanding operation if they are still in op-
voltage on its output terminal without transient. Proposed theory
eration even when the main grid is out of order. If this condition
is proved by simulation and experiment.
sustains, the secondary winding of the distribution transformer
may be inversely excited by the DG system which results in II. INDIRECT CURRENT CONTROL ALGORITHM
danger to people. Moreover, when the grid power is restored, the
phase difference between the grid voltage and the DG voltage A. Power Circuit Topology
may result in voltage shock to utility equipment. Further more, Fig. 1 shows inverter circuit topology based on the proposed
the voltage and frequency of the DG system may become un- current control algorithm. The utility protection switch is
stable during the islanding operation which brings customers’ governed by a local utility, while the inverter interactive switch
equipment in malfunction or break down. This situation is called is governed by the proposed utility interactive inverter
unintentional islanding operation that should be cleared by so system. When the grid power is normal, the utility protection
called anti-islanding method [2]–[4]. switch and the inverter interactive switch are all in ON
state. In this case, proposed inverter indirectly regulates the grid
Manuscript received July 6, 2006; revised March 20, 2007. Recommended injection current by controlling the applied voltage on the
for publication by Associate Editor Z. Chen. line inductor. If we assume that the emergency load consumes
H. Kim is with the School of Electrical Electronics and Control Engi- 25% of the inverter rated power, the injected current to the grid
neering, Kongju National University, Chungnam 330-717, Korea (e-mail:
[email protected].). is restricted to 75%.
T. Yu and S. Choi are with the Department of Control and Instrumentation When the grid is in fault condition, the utility protection
Engineering, Seoul National University of Technology, Seoul 139-743, Korea switch is tripped by the utility instantly. After that the fault
(e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
is assumed to be reported to the utility interactive inverter with
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. in 3/4 cycle. By acknowledging the main power fault, proposed
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPEL.2008.920879 inverter stops current injection into the grid by switching off
0885-8993/$25.00 © 2008 IEEE
KIM et al.: INDIRECT CURRENT CONTROL ALGORITHM 1343

TABLE II
DESIGN DATA FOR THE LCL FILTER

Fig. 1. Single-phase DG system using proposed utility interactive inverter.

TABLE I
ELECTRICAL SPECIFICATION OF
THE PROPOSED DG SYSTEM
Fig. 2. Phasor diagram for proposed indirect current control algorithm.

3) Decide L/C ratio that guarantees good transient character-

istics on filter inductor current

(4)
the inverter interactive switch , while seamlessly supplying
power to the emergency load by entering into intentional 4) Calculate L and C
islanding operation.
Table I shows the electrical specifications of the proposed
utility interactive inverter system. Although the power rating (5)
of the proposed system is 10 kW for home applications, the
proposed indirect current control algorithm can be extended (6)
to larger scaled DG systems including three-phase inverters
without much difference.
5) Calculate
LCL filter configuration is considered for the grid interface
of the proposed utility interactive inverter. In conventional di-
(7)
rect current regulation type utility interactive inverter systems,
L-type filter is used for regulating the injection current into the
Table II shows the LCL filter data designed by proposed de-
grid, and CL-type filter is additionally installed for attenuating
sign procedure.
the injection current ripple that is resulted from the inverter
switching [5], [6].
However, the filter topology presented in this paper is based C. Control System
on LC-type filter that attenuates the voltage ripples from the in-
Conventional direct current regulation method has good
verter switching. Thus by controlling the filter capacitor voltage,
performance on injection current in utility interactive operation
the injection current can be regulated indirectly by applying
mode, while transient problem is expected during operation
proper voltage to the line inductor that is located in grid side.
mode change from current regulation to voltage regulation
when intentional islanding operation occurs. However, pro-
B. LCL Filter Design posed indirect current regulation method has no transient
problem during the operation mode change.
Design procedure for the LCL filter of the proposed indirect Proposed indirect current control algorithm regulates the in-
current controlled utility interactive inverter is proposed as fol- jection current indirectly by controlling the applied voltage on
lows [7]. the line inductor during utility interactive operation. When
1) Calculate the active power to be injected into grid is assumed , the
required injection current through the line inductor can be
(1) calculated as

2) Determine LC filter bank by filter cut off frequency (8)

(2) Then, the required voltage applied on the line inductor

should be equal to
(3)
(9)
1344 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 23, NO. 3, MAY 2008

Fig. 3. Control system block diagram for the proposed indirect current control algorithm.

Fig. 2 describes phasor diagram among the grid voltage , local utility standards. When the peak value of the grid is out
target injection current , filter capacitor voltage , and the of the limiter range, the proposed inverter system stops utility
required voltage on the line inductor . interactive operation mode, but goes into intentional islanding
Therefore, the required magnitude and control angle for the operation mode without transient problems.
filter capacitor voltage to inject current into grid can be cal- The inner PI controller instantaneously controls the filter ca-
culated as follows: pacitor voltage to the reference value ). If the inner PI con-
trol gains are properly designed, the filter capacitor voltage will
(10) be controlled sinusoidal according to the reference magnitude
of , and the reference phase angle of . Thus the
(11) injection current can be regulated also sinusoidal and in phase
to the main voltage.
When the main voltage is normal, the control system indi-
Equations (10) and (11) will be the references to control the pro- rectly regulates the injection current sinusoidal and in phase to
posed utility interactive inverter. The magnitude of the filter ca- the main voltage by controlling the filter capacitor voltage as
pacitor voltage can be controlled by a simple feedforward con- described above.
troller since it is not necessarily controlled accurately. However, When the main voltage is in fault, the control angle slowly
the control angle should be controlled precisely. reaches to its maximum limit value while the PLL gener-
Fig. 3 describes control system block diagram for the pro- ates constant speed phase angle . Here 2 is
posed indirect current control method. The outer control loop a fixed angular frequency by the PLL. Thus the resultant refer-
regulates the injection current slowly in the frequency do- ence phase angle to the inner PI controller will be .
main, while the inner control loop instantaneously controls the The reference magnitude to the inner PI controller
filter capacitor voltage of the output LC filter in the time slowly decreases to % that is assumed the crit-
domain. ical low voltage allowed by the utility standard. Therefore the
Parallel inner compensation loop of the filter capacitor filter capacitor voltage is maintained stable with the decreased
voltage via high pass filter (HPF) is added to dampen the magnitude of % during intentional islanding op-
resonance resulted from the LC output filter [8]. eration.
Reference for the outer control loop is calculated by (8) mul-
tiplied by . Since the injection current is assumed to be
sinusoidal, only its peak value is sensed and fedback to outer III. FEASIBILITY STUDY
control loop. The outer PI controller slowly minimizes the injec-
A. Simulation
tion current error by regulating the control angle that is added
to the synchronized phase angle of the main voltage To investigate the feasibility of the proposed topology and
generated by a PLL circuit. Here, is angular frequency of the control algorithm for utility interactive inverters, simulation has
main voltage. The resultant phase angle summation is been done. Simulation scenario is as follows.
sent to the augment for a sine function. 1) Initially, main power system is in normal condition (utility
The output of the sine function is multiplied by the peak protection switch is ON state). Although the inverter
value of the filter capacitor voltage resulting in the interactive switch is ON, the utility interactive inverter
reference for the nested inner voltage control loop . The just supplies 25% of its rated power to emergency load
peak value of the filter capacitor voltage is fed for- without injecting current into the grid.
ward from the peak value of the main voltage via the limiter of 2) At 0.2 s, the utility interactive inverter starts to increase the
in which the window width depends on grid injection current up to 75% of its rated power.
KIM et al.: INDIRECT CURRENT CONTROL ALGORITHM 1345

Fig. 4. Simulation for inverter output current and filter capacitor voltage ac-
cording to each control algorithm: (a) conventional direct current control algo- Fig. 5. Zoomed-in simulation waveforms when the fault occurred in the main:
rithm and (b) proposed indirect current control algorithm. (a) conventional direct current control algorithm and (b) proposed indirect cur-
rent control algorithm.

3) Interruption occurs in the grid at 0.5 s. It is assumed that the

utility protection switch is immediately tripped while of conventional direct current control method shown in Fig. 5(a),
the inverter interactive switch acknowledges and trips the voltage applied on the emergency load is floated and dis-
after 3/4 cycle from the fault. torted by circuit conditions during the time delay in sensing
4) On acknowledging the main power fault at 0.515 s, the the grid fault, since the inverter is still in current control mode
utility interactive inverter enters into intentional islanding and lost controllability on the filter capacitor voltage. However,
operation by tripping the inverter interactive switch in case of proposed indirect current control method shown in
while continuously supplying power to the emergency Fig. 5(b), the voltage applied on the emergency load is very
load. much stable during the same sensing delay.
Fig. 4 shows waveforms of the inverter output current and the
B. Experiment
filter capacitor voltage according to each control algorithm in
the simulation scenario. As can be seen in the simulation results, To verify proposed theory, an experimental utility interactive
both of conventional direct current control method and pro- inverter system has been established as specified in Table III.
posed indirect current control method nicely regulate the injec- The exact calculation of the filter inductance is 1.284 mH
tion current in normal utility interactive operation mode. How- and that of the filter capacitance is 8.77 F. However, since
ever, when the main power fails at 0.50 s, the performance be- the available capacitor in the market is 10 F, the filter parame-
tween the two control algorithms becomes very much different ters in the experimental system were adjusted as 1.2 mH
during transferring from utility interactive operation mode to in- and 10 F. Although the line inductor was calculated
tentional islanding operation mode. to 3.21 mH, 7.8 mH of it was used in the experiment for con-
Fig. 5 shows zoomed in waveforms of the inverter output cur- venience. If high performance voltage controller is used instead
rent and inverter ac terminal voltage according to each control of the simple PI controller, the size of the line inductor is ex-
algorithm when the power interruption occurs at 0.50 s. In case pected to be decreased. As shown in Fig. 6, the control system
1346 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 23, NO. 3, MAY 2008

Fig. 6. Block diagram of experimental system.

TABLE III
EXPERIMENTAL SPECIFICATION AND LCL FILTER

Fig. 7. Experimental waveforms for filter capacitor voltage (ch. 1), grid injec-
tion current (ch. 2), and main voltage (ch. 3) by proposed indirect current con-
trol algorithm during utility interactive operation: (a) transient operation and (b)
steady state operation.

for the experimental system was implemented fully digitally by

a dSPACE 1104 control board.
Fig. 7 shows the experimental waveforms by the proposed
indirect current control algorithm during utility interactive op-
eration. Fig. 7(a) explains for the build-up characteristic of the
injection current related with the main voltage and the filter ca-
pacitor voltage. The injection current is always in phase with
the main voltage, and the magnitude of it is slowly built up
to the reference value since the control angle difference be-
tween the filter capacitor voltage and the main voltage is in-
creased slowly by the outer PI controller. Fig. 7(b) describes
the zoomed in waveforms during utility interactive operation in
the steady state. Since the injection current is relatively small
(around 25% from the rated current), control angle difference Fig. 8. Experimental waveforms for filter capacitor voltage (ch. 1), and main
between the filter capacitor voltage and the main voltage is very voltage (ch. 3) by proposed indirect current control algorithm when fault was
occurred in main voltage.
small (around 1.5 ).
The experimental waveforms in Fig. 8 demonstrate the sta-
bility of the filter capacitor voltage when the main voltage is
In the proposed control algorithm, one voltage sensor on the
abruptly decreased around to 30% from the nominal value. Al-
filter capacitor terminal supplies feedback information to the
though the fault sensing delay is set to infinite here, there is al-
inner control loop to regulate the voltage, while it also sup-
most no transient in the filter capacitor voltage that supplies the
plies high frequency resonance information to the parallel inner
emergency load during the main power fault.
compensation loop to dampen the voltage resonance instanta-
Fig. 9 illustrates synchronization performance of the filter ca-
neously. Thus the outer current control loop can concentrate on
pacitor voltage into main voltage when the main power is re-
regulating the injection current in relatively slow frequency do-
stored. After the synchronization is completed, the utility inter-
main [9]–[13].
active inverter can be returned to utility interactive operation.
Through the simulations and experiments, it was verified
that proposed indirect current control algorithm can supply IV. CONCLUSION
stable power to emergency load seamlessly during transition This paper has proposed an inverter topology and control al-
from utility interactive operation mode to intentional islanding gorithm for utility interactive inverter systems that has emer-
operation mode and vice versa. gency load. Since the utility interactive inverter controlled by
KIM et al.: INDIRECT CURRENT CONTROL ALGORITHM 1347

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Hyosung Kim (S’90–M’96) was born in Seoul,

Fig. 9. Experimental waveforms for filter capacitor voltage (ch. 1), and main Korea, on October 20, 1958. He received the B.S.
voltage (ch. 3) by proposed indirect current control algorithm during synchro- and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from
nization when main voltage is restored. Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea, in 1981
and 1983, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree from
Chungbuk National University, Chungbuk 361-763,
Korea, in 1995.
the proposed indirect current control method always operates in From 1982 to 1986, he was employed at
voltage control mode, the supplying voltage to the emergency Tong-Yang Cement Manufacturing Co., Korea,
load could be maintained stable without any transient problem where he participated in the factory automation
that would occur in conventional direct current control method project. From 1996 to 1997, he was a Visiting
Scholar in the Department of Electrical Engineering, Okayama University,
when the grid fails. This paper also has presented filter design Okayama, Japan. From 2000 to 2001, he was an Associate Research Professor,
guideline and data for a LCL filter for the proposed inverter Institute of Energy Technology, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark.
topology and control algorithm. Through simulations by PSIM From 1987 to 2005, he was a Full Professor in the Department of Control
Engineering, Cheonan Technical College, Cheonan, Korea. Since 2005 he has
and experiments using a dSPACE 1104 control board, the feasi- been a tenured Professor in the School of Electrical Electronics and Control
bility of the proposed topology and control algorithm were ver- Engineering, Kongju University, Yeasan, Korea. He is interested in power
ified. Proposed inverter topology and control algorithm are ex- quality, static seires/parallel compensators, and renewable energy.
pected to be useful in DG systems.
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Taesik Yu was born in Buyeo, Korea, in 1979. He
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