A Novel Virtual Inertia Implementation Scheme using Model Predictive Control for Enhancing the Voltage Stiffness of a Grid Tied DC Microgrid

Abstract

In this paper, a novel virtual inertia scheme using model predictive control (MPC) is proposed which is capable of reducing the rate of change of voltage (ROCOV) during power disturbances in a DC microgrid (DC-MG). The control scheme is implemented in the bi-directional interlinking converter (BIC) which interfaces the DC-MG with the utility grid. The proposed MPC based virtual inertia scheme completely eliminates the traditional proportional integral based cascaded inner current and outer voltage loop structure of the BIC. The proposed technique ensures a fast dynamic response and is capable to quickly reduce the ROCOV of the DC bus during power disturbances. The control technique also ensures unity power factor (upf) operation of the grid connected BIC. The efficacy of the proposed control scheme has been validated with MATLAB/SIMULINK simulations and the results are presented.