Inclusion of Current Limiter Nonlinearity in the Characteristic Analysis of Sustained Subsynchronous Oscillations in Grid-Connected PMSGs
Tianhao Wu, Qirong Jiang, Jan Shair, Hangyin Mao, Xiaorong Xie
Abstract
The interactions between permanent magnet synchronous generators (PMSGs) and weak grids may cause negatively damped or growing subsynchronous oscillation (SSO). The growing-SSO would evolve into a sustained-SSO when it is predominantly governed by the nonlinearities in the PMSG's converter control, such as current limiter. Most of the existing frequency-domain modeling and stability analysis methods are in the small-signal sense and thus unable to consider the impact of such nonlinearities. Besides, these methods can hardly give vital information to characterize the sustained-SSO, for instance, the magnitude. This paper presents a detailed characteristic analysis of the sustained-SSO while accounting for the effect of current limiter nonlinearity. First, a single-input-single-output (SISO) frequency-domain model of the PMSG is developed. This SISO model comprises the transfer functions of outer-/inner-loop controls and phase-locked loop (PLL). The nonlinear part, i.e., current limiter, is incorporated into the model using the describing function (DF) method. Then, the equivalent transformation on the system's closed-loop characteristic equation is used to separate the SISO model into independent linear and nonlinear parts. This separation enables the use of the DF-based Nyquist criterion for evaluating the system stability and determining oscillation attributes, such as the magnitude and frequency. Both the analytic results and time-domain simulations reveal that the current limiter has a significant impact on the characteristics of the sustained-SSO.