Improving the Transient Stability of Grid Connected Converter During Severe Voltage Drop by Virtual Impedance

With the rise in the penetration of inverter based distributed energy sources, grid codes say that converters should not be disconnected during the fault. These sources should also help the grid by reactive power injection. Power system grids are resistive inductive and the converter may be unstable during the fault. Converters use phase locked loop (PLL) to synchronize with the grid. PLL is not able to be stable during severe voltage drop, so converters cannot ride through the fault and should be disconnected. In this paper a novel method based on virtual impedance is proposed to maintain the synchronization during severe voltage drop. This method needs grid impedance estimation and virtually connects the converter to a point that has a stronger connection. By this novel method, during voltage drop, the converter stays connected to the grid and injects reactive power. Simulation results in MATLAB verify the ability of proposed method in improving the transient stability of converter.