Article: Design and verification of FPGA-based prototype of VSG controller Journal: International Journal of Power and Energy Conversion (IJPEC) 2024 Vol.15 No.3 pp.257 - 280 Abstract: Distributed generation leads to the loss of inertia that causes higher fluctuations in system dynamics and reduces frequency stability. This effect is very high in the case of microgrids (MGs). A virtual synchronous generator (VSG), which is the imitation of the synchronous generator, ascertained to be a reliable way to bring back the lost inertia. However, as phase-locked loop (PLL) is nonlinear, its use in measurement of frequency and rate of change of frequency can degrade the response time, and it can become worst with lower voltages. In this work, a VSG controller without using PLL is proposed and the controller does not depend on the magnitude of voltage. The Verilog hardware description language is used to develop the hardware prototype of the VSG controller. The hardware is developed on the FPGA board viz. SPARTAN-3E FPGA. The prototype is verified and validated by the hardware-in-loop (HIL) in a real-time environment using a real-time digital simulator. Its performance is tested under various disturbances in the MG and results are compared with MG without VSG and with simulated VSG. The results suggest that the hardware prototype of VSG is stabilising disturbances in the MG to a great extent by providing virtual inertia. Inderscience Publishers - linking academia, business and industry through research

Title: Design and verification of FPGA-based prototype of VSG controller

Authors: Praveen Kumar; Vinendra Sairamkrishna; Sachidananda Sen

Addresses: Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Purnea College of Engineering, Purnea, DSTTE, Bihar, 854303, India ' Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, Uttarakhand, India ' Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, SR University, Warangal – 506371, Telangana, India

Abstract: Distributed generation leads to the loss of inertia that causes higher fluctuations in system dynamics and reduces frequency stability. This effect is very high in the case of microgrids (MGs). A virtual synchronous generator (VSG), which is the imitation of the synchronous generator, ascertained to be a reliable way to bring back the lost inertia. However, as phase-locked loop (PLL) is nonlinear, its use in measurement of frequency and rate of change of frequency can degrade the response time, and it can become worst with lower voltages. In this work, a VSG controller without using PLL is proposed and the controller does not depend on the magnitude of voltage. The Verilog hardware description language is used to develop the hardware prototype of the VSG controller. The hardware is developed on the FPGA board viz. SPARTAN-3E FPGA. The prototype is verified and validated by the hardware-in-loop (HIL) in a real-time environment using a real-time digital simulator. Its performance is tested under various disturbances in the MG and results are compared with MG without VSG and with simulated VSG. The results suggest that the hardware prototype of VSG is stabilising disturbances in the MG to a great extent by providing virtual inertia.

Keywords: field programmable gate array; FPGA; microgrid; phase locked loop; PLL; virtual inertia; virtual synchronous generator; VSG.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPEC.2024.140017

International Journal of Power and Energy Conversion, 2024 Vol.15 No.3, pp.257 - 280

Received: 20 Dec 2023
Accepted: 27 Jan 2024
Published online: 15 Jul 2024 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article

Title: Design and verification of FPGA-based prototype of VSG controller

Keep up-to-date