This paper was presented at the 13th Wind Integration Workshop (Berlin, 13 November 2014) and published in the
workshop proceedings.
Synchronous Inertia Control for Wind Turbines
Adaption of the Virtual Synchronous Machine to Wind Turbines for providing Distributed
Contributions to Power System Inertia
Daniel Duckwitz*, Martin Shan, Boris Fischer
Department Control Engineering
Fraunhofer IWES Energy System Technology
Kassel, Germany
Abstract The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it
provides a self-contained introduction to power system inertia
and its emulation with a focus on wind power plants. The
physical inertia of synchronous machines plays an important
role for the short-term balancing of active power in AC power
systems. With an increasing share of inverter-based
generating units, like e.g. wind turbines, this system inertia -
and its stabilizing effect - is reduced. A widely discussed
solution is to integrate an emulation of the inertia in the
inverters controls. Second, the paper presents some first
results on the adaption of the so called virtual synchronous
machine to a wind turbine. Implications for the control of the
generator system are identified, including a suggestion for
limiting the inverter power, and an exemplary control design
is being carried out. Simulations with simplified, generic
models of the power system and an aggregated wind power
plant show that the proposed Synchronous Inertia Control
Scheme enables wind turbines to contribute to power system
inertia in the same way a synchronous machine does.
Inertial Response; Virtual Synchronous Machine; Synthetic
Inertia; Synchronous Inertia Control; Synchronous Machine;
Converter-based Generation; Wind Power Plant; Instantaneous
Reserve
I. INTRODUCTION
The notion of power system inertia is related to the kinetic energy
of the rotating machines whose rotational speed is coupled to the
grid frequency. It plays an important role for frequency stability
because it provides the active power balancing in power systems
on a time-scale from zero until primary frequency control
becomes effective (about 15 s). For example, the sudden change
of generated active power due to an outage of a power plant is
shared between the remaining synchronous machines by
momentary deceleration of their rotors. Section II.A provides a
self-contained general introduction to power system inertia.
With the increasing penetration of the power system with inverter-
based generating units such as wind turbines, the amount of
directly coupled rotor inertia is decreasing. This raises concern
because it might degrade the short-term frequency stability.
Section II.E provides a systematic formulation of this problem.
Using appropriate control measures, inverter-based generating
units can be brought to contribute to system inertia: The approach
of synchronous inertia mimics some physical properties of
synchronous generators. This equivalence allows the power
system to rely on a constant, high-quality system inertia regardless
of the share of inverter-based and conventional power infeed.
Furthermore, when power systems are transformed towards very
high renewable generation capacity, the equivalent contributions
*daniel.duckwitz@iwes.fraunhofer.de
to system inertia ensure that the system can be transformed
steadily without abrupt changes in the behavior of the inertial
response.
Wind turbines offer suitable energy storage in the form of the
mechanical rotor inertia. Therefore, they lend themselves nicely
for contributing to system inertia. Sections II.B and II.C present
requirements and approaches, respectively, for enabling wind
power to do so. The vast majority of the proposed approaches
does not fully emulate the behavior of synchronous machines.
That is, these approaches still rely on a certain amount of real
synchronous machines being connected to the grid. In contrast, we
pick up on a concept of virtual synchronous machines (VSM),
which is able to autonomously operate in a grid without a single
real synchronous machine. It has firstly been proposed for the
application in wind power plants by Tarnowski in [1], and is
further elaborated in this paper. Section II.D briefly reviews
different VSM approaches. Implications for the generator system
of the wind turbine are explained in Section III.A. The remainder
of the paper deals with a comprehensive description of the applied
VSM variant (Section III.B), a typical system design and analysis
(Sections III.C, III.D and III.E) and the adaptation to the wind
turbine including simulations with simplified models of a wind
turbine and a power system (Section III.F). In Section III.G, a
power limitation scheme is introduced. A brief discussion of the
damping properties of the proposed inertia emulation scheme is
added in Section III.H.
II. INERTIAL RESPONSE ISSUES IN POWER SYSTEMS WITH HIGH
SHARES OF RENEWABLE, CONVERTER-BASED GENERATION
A. Introduction to Power System Inertia
The first few seconds in the response of a power system to
disturbances in the active power balance (e.g. load change, power
plant disconnection) is referred to as the inertial response. On a
global level, it describes the reaction of system frequency after an
event, before primary control (governor response) becomes
effective. After a description of the reaction of the overall power
system, the sharing of the power imbalance among individual
generation units will be briefly discussed. Several examples of
inertial responses after a step-wise increase of the system load (by
1% of previous load) are given in Figure 1. In the left plot (a), the
effect of reduced power system inertia due to the replacement of
conventional power plants by inverter coupled power plants can
be observed. Directly after the load step at = 60s , the
mechanical power of the generation plants remains constant,
leaving an unbalance to the increased electric power , which
results in a decelerating torque on the system inertia:
= , 1
This paper was presented at the 13th Wind Integration Workshop (Berlin, 13 November 2014) and published in the workshop proceedings.
Figure 1: Inertial response of power systems - (a) Effect of
declining system inertia and (b) illustrative configurations
where is the instantaneous rotational speed. When the power
imbalance and the total system inertia constant are known,
the initial slope of the frequency curve can be determined
according to the swing equation of the synchronous machine [2] :
= = . 2
2
The inertia constant is defined as the time in seconds it takes to
accelerate the inertia from zero to rated speed at rated
power :
= = . 3 The second phase is referred to as deceleration phase. At system-
For a power system, the systems inertia constant represents
the sum of all inertia constants of rotating drivetrains connected to
the system by synchronous machines in the systems p.u. base. For
a synchronous machine, the inertia constant "#$%& refers to the
drivetrain inertia of the plant.
In Figure 1 (a) the blue curve depicts the inertial response of a
power system with = 8(, which is representative of a power
system that is fed by conventional power plants. After several
seconds, the primary control (speed governors) begins to
counteract the frequency deviation and restores a steady-state
frequency. When 50% of conventional generation is replaced by
inverter coupled power plants (e.g. wind turbines), the system
inertia would decrease to = 4(, causing the initial slope of
the frequency (rate of change of frequency, ROCOF) to double.
The green curve in Figure 1 (a) depicts the response of the
modified power system when the parameters of primary control
remain unchanged. The minimum frequency is lower and the
response is more oscillatory in comparison to the blue curve. For
most conventional power systems, is in the range of 3 to 9
seconds. With lower inertia, primary control must react faster to
keep the frequency within limits. There are however limiting
factors in the response characteristic of primary control, as for
example dead time, delays and power rate limits. These factors
impose limits to the minimum required system inertia. This is why
inverters should contribute to system inertia, too.
Figure 1 (b) shows the inertial response for two artificial
illustrative parameterizations. In contrast to the normal case (blue
curve, with primary control), in an imaginary power system with
infinite inertia (green curve), frequency would not change when
power were drawn from the inertia. In the undesirable power
system without a speed governor (red curve), frequency would
continuously fall after a change of load.
Now that the overall system response was explained, it is further
important to describe the parameters that influence the distribution
of power impacts [2, 3], i.e. how changes in the load are
distributed among generation units.
The system parameters that determine the distribution of active
power load changes will be illustrated for a system consisting of
two generators and a resistive load (schematic in Figure 2, classic
RMS grid model where machines are described by a voltage
source behind transient reactance). The reactances *+ represent the
sum of transient reactance and transformer and line reactances.
The system load is increased stepwise by 1% at = 60s and the
electrical power of each generator is plotted in Figure 2. Instantly
after the event, load is shared between generators according to the
ratio of synchronization power coefficients (SPC). The SPC in this
case is defined as ratio between power and load angle changes,
where load angle is defined between the generators internal
voltage and the load bus, i.e.
- |2+ ||23 |
,= . = cos 2+ 23 . 4
- /0 *+
The SPC can be interpreted as an electrical distance between two
nodes of a grid. When angles are small and voltages remain
constant, the SPC mainly depends on . This results in a power
7
89: 7;
ratio of = , i.e. the power sharing at the first instant after a
89; 7:
sudden load change is determined by the inverse ratio of the
reactances between generators and the load. This phase begins
with a step-change in currents and voltage-angles at the grid
reactances and endures for about 100ms (example) up to a few
seconds (see e.g. [3]), while generator rotors oscillate and
resynchronize to each other (oscillations omitted in Figure 2). It is
therefore called synchronization phase. This phase transitions to
the second phase, when a synchronized deceleration of the
individual inertias dominates. During that phase, the power share
of each generator is determined according to its inertia constant.
wide constant ROCOF , we can conclude for the deceleration
89 <
phase from (2) that : = :. In the example of Figure 2, the SPC-
89; <;
based load sharing of the first about 100ms causes Generator 1 to
carry more of the additional load, because the effective impedance
is lower for this device. Afterwards, when load is shared
according to inertia, Generator 2 supplies a higher share, as its
is larger. Only when primary control restores a stationary
frequency after several seconds, the additional load is shared
equally, because of identical governor droops.
For synchronous machines the transient reactance =>? is suitable to
describe dynamic effects in the time-range of the inertial response.
The plant inertia constant 9#$%& and the inverse of the transient
reactance A are approximately proportional to the machine rated
7@
power therefore a reasonably distributed power sharing is
inherently present in conventional power systems during the
inertial response. However, the first phase also depends on the
electrical distance to the load, and therefore on the load location.
For the contribution of power converters to the inertial response,
an even distribution of power among all generators would be
beneficial, as it would effectively limit overloading of individual
generators. For the synchronous inertia method proposed in Part
III, the inertia constant can be chosen and should be set
proportionally to the converter rating and equal to the average
inertia constant within the power system. But during the SPC-
dependent first phase an even distribution cannot be guaranteed,
as the reactance is primarily given by the transformers short-
circuit voltage 2B (2B is equal to the equivalent series reactance in
Figure 2: Inertial response of a two-generator system; three
response phases where load sharing is influenced by
Synchronization Power Coefficient, Inertia and Governor
droop. Damping is set to unnaturally high levels to omit
angle oscillations this allows a more straightforward
identification of the response phases.
This paper was presented at the 13th Wind Integration Workshop (Berlin, 13 November 2014) and published in the workshop proceedings.
a p.u. system). Therefore, protective functions against excessive
currents must be implemented at each inverter, while maintaining
the contribution to system inertia of the entirety of inverter power
plants.
A note on the use of even distribution among generators and
equal load sharing: These phrases are frequently used in this
paper and refer to an equal sharing of load changes with respect
to each generators power rating, i.e. an equal share in p.u. or
percent expressed in each generators p.u. system.
B. Current and future inertial response requirements for Wind
Power Plants
In the Hydro Qubec Power System, installed wind capacity will
rise from 11 % to a 25% share of total generation [4]. To keep the
minimum frequency after a major plant outage at a constant level,
the grid code requires a Response equivalent to H=3.5s from
each wind power plant.
The Gone Green Scenario 2020[5] of National Grid UK may be
much more demanding regarding the inertial response. The
installed wind capacity amounts to 29GW at a 25 GW off-peak
demand. In that case, the system load could be supplied by wind
generation only, leaving a power system without or with a very
small share of synchronous machines. The currently available
control methods (see Section C) will not be sufficient to provide
the system inertia in this scenario.
The effect of receding inertia on the Continental European power
system has recently been summarized by the German transmission
system operators [6]. The document concludes that a system
inertia of H=0.5s is sufficient to cope with the design scenario of
the sudden disconnection of 3GW of generation. However, the
unplanned islanding of parts of the system can only be managed if
the power imbalance of the islanded part is less than 10% of the
current load under the condition that the inertia constant of the
islanded part is at least H=1.25s. The authors recommend
investigating the application of synthetic inertia control for areas
that export more than 10% of the load. The ancillary services
study 2030 [7] recommends to establish the requirement for the
provision of synthetic inertia through wind power plants to
enable Germany to fulfil its system responsibility.
In future scenarios, the option of disconnecting all synchronous
generation is often not considered a realistic option alone from
technical considerations. Two possible reasons for the assumption
of must-run synchronous generation are the provision of system
inertia and the provision of primary, secondary and long-term
reserve power. When energy storages are applied on a large scale,
reserve power could however be provided by converter based
units [8]. Along with a suitable synthetic inertia method as for
example the Synchronous Inertia Control method proposed in Part
III, these technical challenges to the operation of power systems
without any synchronous generators will then be solved.
C. State of the art of wind power plant inertial response controls
There is a variety of synthetic inertia methods, which are available
from most wind turbine manufacturers. These methods can be
categorized into two general classes.
Event-based methods: These methods detect a severe frequency
event and react with increased active power. For example, active
power infeed is increased by 5% for 10 seconds (e.g. [9], [10],
[11]).
Differentiation of grid frequency: The derivative of the
measured grid frequency is determined and active power is
changed proportionally to the derivative. Differentiating requires
additional low-pass filtering, which causes the power to be
injected with a delay. The measurement will follow the local
frequency of neighboring synchronous machines (e.g. [12], [13],
[14]).
These types do not provide an internal frequency state and
therefore rely on the measurement of electrical frequency. To
provide a steady system frequency, a sufficient share of
synchronous generators is required for these methods to operate
reliably. Currently, no detailed investigation regarding this
sufficient share is known to the authors. These methods do not
contribute to the synchronization phase in the way a synchronous
machine does and are therefore not a solution to the problem
statement of Section E. However, the state-of-the-art methods are
suitable for medium shares of wind capacity, as in the Hydro
Qubec Case (see Section B).
In the doctoral thesis of G.C. Tarnowski [15], contributions of
wind power plants to frequency control were investigated in
detail. In a patent application [1] by the same author, the
utilization of a virtual synchronous machine (VSM) in wind
turbine converters is described. The application of a VSM differs
significantly from the two methods described above: It features an
internal state for frequency that is related to the rotational speed of
a virtual inertia.
D. Brief Review of Virtual Synchronous Machine Concepts
The virtual synchronous machine (also: virtual synchronous
generator) concept in general refers to reproducing the behavior of
a synchronous machine by using a model of a synchronous
machine within an inverter control scheme. The model complexity
and the control scheme vary between the approaches. The swing
equation of the synchronous machine (2) is the common basis for
most of the models. In this section, some concepts from the
literature will be briefly described before introducing the
synchronous inertia scheme that will be used throughout the rest
of this paper. A recent overview has been compiled in [16].
In one class of approaches the VSM model output is a current
reference that is fed to an inner current control loop. The VSM
model input is the measured line-side voltage. This class can be
referred to as current-source VSM. The VISMA concept is a
member of this class, where the VSM consists of the mechanical
model and an electrical model of the stator (and in some variants,
of rotor circuit models [17]). The properties regarding the inertial
response are described in [18]. In a laboratory test the capability to
improve the inertial response in conjunction with a classic
synchronous machine has been demonstrated. The initial ROCOF
appears to be unchanged, hinting to possible delays in the inertial
response.
In the VSYNC.EU project, various experiments related to the
inertial response of inverters have been carried out. One method is
based on the modification of the PLL of a current controlled
inverter [19], while another focus was the measurement of grid
frequency [20].
In contrast to the methods above, there are several variants based
on feedforward voltage control. Voltage is directly calculated (in
terms of magnitude and angle) and fed as a reference to the pulse
width modulation (PWM) of the inverter. Currents can then only
be influenced from inside the VSM by changing the voltage
reference, i.e. the VSM takes over the task of the current
controller. The inverter then resembles a voltage source that will
react to grid events like a synchronous machine, i.e. it will supply
synchronizing power in the case of grid angle disturbances and
supply reactive power during voltage disturbances. This results
from the passive behavior of the inductive grid connection that
does not rely on any control action. It is then the task of the VSM
to adjust the voltage angle such that synchronization is
maintained, oscillations are damped and the desired active power
exchange is established. Furthermore, the voltage magnitude is to
be adjusted such that the desired reactive power is exchanged.
This control scheme relies on the inductive grid interface, i.e.
output filter inductance, transformer and line inductance. This
approach is also referred to as Synchronverter in [21] and its
equivalence to Inverter Droop Control [22, 23] was demonstrated
in [16].
The variants with inner current control loop easily allow imposing
limits on inverter currents and thereby effectively protect the
power hardware from overloading. The current control loop may
This paper was presented at the 13th Wind Integration Workshop (Berlin, 13 November 2014) and published in the workshop proceedings.
however interfere with the contribution to the synchronization
phase. With the voltage feedforward approaches, an instantaneous
contribution to the synchronization phase is ensured, while
excessive currents may occur.
In any case, the operation of inverters with VSC control schemes
in practice requires additional damping of the swing equation.
This is usually implemented as a proportional feedback of the
virtual rotational speed and then automatically causes a
sometimes unintended - contribution to primary control.
E. Formulation of the Design Problem
In power systems formed by synchronous machines, system
inertia was always inherently present and there was no reason to
regard it as a design parameter. Nowadays, power systems are
changed towards utilizing more renewable energy sources, which
are mostly inverter-based. Power systems are fed by varying ratios
of inverter-based generators over synchronous generators. Let the
ratio of the rated power of inverter-based generators over the total
generation capacity at a certain instant be
F,+%G
CDE = .
5
F, H F,+%G
% classical setup of current controlled systems. In a classical torque
The ratio CDE changes due to fluctuations of wind speed, solar
radiation and system load and the long-term transformation, i.e.
installation of new inverter-based generation and the
decommissioning of synchronous generation.
For the power system under consideration, a predominantly
inductive grid characteristic is assumed. The ratio CDE is in the
range 0 J CDE J 1 , i.e. within a certain planning horizon the
system may be supplied by synchronous generators only at one
moment (e.g. a wind-still night in 2014) but also by only inverter
based generators at another moment (e.g. a windy and sunny day
in 2050). We simplify by assuming the presence of only two
generator types: Wind turbines with full inverter generator system
and synchronous generators. The primary control system is
designed for a certain minimum system inertia constant , +% .
The primary control system remains unchanged when CDE changes.
From above assumptions, the global requirement for system
inertia can be derived: The system inertia constant must always
remain above , +% .
To allow a seamless transition of CDE , the entirety of inverters must
provide an inertial contribution equal to or greater than CDE
, +% , while the entirety of synchronous machines contributes
1 CDE , +% .
As inverters are sensitive to excessive currents, the additional
power due to the inertial response should be distributed evenly
between inverters. Because the SPC varies depending on the grid
connection characteristics and the load location, it cannot be
controlled and therefore the additional power will not be evenly
distributed during the first phase of the response. A high SPC may
cause a group of inverters that are electrically close to a sudden
load increase to limit their contribution to the inertial response. A
certain security margin L should be added to the inertia constant
of all inverters to ensure that the entirety of inverters meets the
Figure 3: Control Schemes for a Full Converter Generator System - Classical Torque Control (left) and Virtual Synchronous
Machine (right)
total requirement of CDE , +% .
Design problem part 1: Each inverter shall contribute to the
inertial response (inverter p.u. system) according to
+%G,+ = 1 H L , +% . 6
Each inverter must contribute to both phases of the inertial
response (SPC and Inertia). Individual inverters may limit their
contribution to the inertial response if the electrical distance is
exceptionally short.
Design problem part 2: The generator system controls shall
remain compliant to the conventional objectives of wind turbine
control, i.e. maximizing power capture and maintaining safe
operation.
III. SYNCHRONOUS INERTIA FOR WIND TURBINES
A. A Generator System with virtual synchronous machine control
for a wind turbine
Before the virtual synchronous machine and synchronous inertia
are introduced in detail, the necessary general setup of the
generator system and converter control is compared to the
controlled generator system of a wind turbine with full converter
(see Figure 3, left), the Machine Side Converter (MSC) is
operated in a current controlled mode, such that the generator
torque can be controlled according to the reference torque
M %,F N . The reference torque is provided by the turbine main
controller in order to control the rotor speed. The generator power
is fed to the DC-link capacitor, causing variations of the DC
voltage. The Grid Side Converter (GSC) is also operated in a
current control mode. The internal control variables are active
current and reactive current at the grid interface. The active
current is then used in the DC-link voltage control loop to
maintain a constant DC voltage, effectively causing the grid side
active power to follow the generator power (Power Port Mode
[24]). Additionally, the GSC allows to follow a suitable reactive
power setpoint OF N .
To apply the Virtual Synchronous Machine (VSM) concept to the
generator system of a wind turbine, the setup in Figure 3 (right) is
suggested. The VSM control must be operated on the GSC. The
controller supplies a reference voltage (amplitude and angle) to
the GSC, while the grid-side currents are measured and used to
calculate active and reactive power P and Q. The VSM modifies
the AC-side terminal voltage of the inverter depending on the
measured P and Q at the grid interface, similar to a real
synchronous machine (see next sections). During the operation of
the VSM, the power supplied to the grid cannot be controlled
directly. The DC voltage can therefore not be kept constant by the
GSC. Instead, the generator torque is modified by the MSC such
that the power fed to the DC-link from the generator ensures a
constant DC-link voltage. With the limitations in available power
in a wind turbine, this is of course only possible on a short-term
basis, due to the limited energy stored in the drivetrain inertia. In
contrast to the classic control scheme, the MSC is operated in
This paper was presented at the 13th Wind Integration Workshop (Berlin, 13 November 2014) and published in the workshop proceedings.

power port mode. In this setup, the generator torque is indirectly
controlled by the VSM torque reference M %,F N at the GSC. The
actual generator torque will follow the torque reference supplied
by the turbine main controller, but may be disturbed by external
grid conditions.
Subsequently, we assume that the MSC regulates the DC-link
voltage sufficiently fast, such that we can consider the generator
power to be equal to the grid-side active power.
The grid-interface of a wind turbine is assumed to include one
transformer at the turbine terminals. This transformer ensures a
predominantly inductive grid connection, that is required for the
VSM implementation suggested in Section B.
B. VSM control scheme
Subsequently, the VSM control scheme used in this paper is
introduced. It combines the swing equation approach [21] with the
feedforward damping introduced by Engler in [22]. This
combination offers a unique new feature: the contribution to
primary control can be disabled while oscillation damping is
preserved.
A VSM connected to an infinite grid (characterized by infinite
grid angle +%N and infinite grid voltage |P|+%N ) over an effective
reactance = will be considered. The inverter bridge and PWM
generation are assumed to form an ideal voltage source that
accepts the reference values F N and | |. The power exchange
with the infinite grid at a certain nominal operational point (values
with index zero) results from
Q0 RSTU,0
MF+>, = sinX F N, +%N, Y . 7 If L7 L< is known, the damping ratio _ can be directly chosen
7
The active power control schematic with linearized grid behavior
is depicted in Figure 4. The torque balance is calculated according
to (1) and the swing equation (2) corresponds to the two
integrators (with inertia coefficient L< = 2 ). The virtual
rotational speed is the input to both damping paths: the
feedback damping coefficient L" corresponds to a speed-
dependent torque feedback, i.e. to the speed governor of a
conventional synchronous generator. When = F N , the
feedback damping torque is zero. The feedforward damping
coefficient L>N causes an offset angle that is added to the integral
of to form the reference voltage angle F N . Feedforward
damping causes a power offset at the grid reactance. Its
functionality is equivalent to the damper winding of a
synchronous machine. The output of the active power controller is
the voltage reference angle F N . The power electronics part of the
inverter is assumed to be an ideal voltage source. The reactance
coefficient
P+%N,
L7 = cos F N, +%N, 8 transformer is the governing factor, while the high value
* represents a single turbine in a remote location, where two
represents the linearized behavior of the grid reactance and is
equivalent to the SPC of (4).
Reactive power control is only marginally coupled to active power
in a purely inductive and stiff grid and will therefore not be
considered further in this paper.
C. Synchronous Inertia Control (SIC)
Section A and B present the general structure of the VSM loop.
The next step is to choose the design parameters so as to meet the
requirements formulated in section II.E.
As we are only interested in contributing to inertia, the primary
control contribution is disabled by setting L" = 0 . The inertia
coefficient L< follows from the specified requirements, while the
reactance coefficient L\ depends on the grid connection. To
simplify matters, we assume a sufficiently small measurement
delay and set ] ( = 1. The design task is therefore limited to
the selection of the feedforward damping parameter L>N , and to a
certain extent, the inertia coefficient L< . To this end, the transfer
function of the closed loop from the disturbance input +%N to the
output power MF+> is derived:
MF+> ( L7 (
= . 9
+%N ( ( H XL>N L< L7 Y( H L< L7
By equating the coefficients of the denominator polynomial with
those of a 2nd order lag element we get a damping ratio _ and a
time constant :
2_ 1
( H (H = ( H L>N L< L7 ( H L< L7
10
1 1
= ; _ = L>N aL7 L< .
aL7 L< 2
through L>N . Furthermore, the dominant time constant can be
influenced by the inertia parameter L< for a certain L7 . The time
constant is decisive for two important properties: the duration of
the synchronization phase and the bandwidth of the torque
reference control. The root locus in Figure 5 illustrates the effect
of varying L>N (green curve). Below, we will consider two
scenarios: high damping ratio _ = 0.7 and low damping ratio
_ = 0.2, i.e. L>N = 0.08 and L>N = 0.02 in the baseline scenario.
D. Robustness and Stability Margins
In this section, the dependency of the control loop on variations of
the plant parameters is being investigated. The grid stiffness may
vary and the inertia coefficient may have to be adjusted to
changing requirements. For the inertia constant, a range of
0.5s c c 10s results in the coefficients given in Table 1. For
the effective reactance a range of 0.08 c = c 0.3 has been
considered. The lower value represents a wind turbine in a large
wind power plant with very stiff connection, where the turbine
transformers with low power rating and a long MV distribution
line are involved. The baseline reactance coefficient refers to a
wind power plant consisting of six turbines with direct HV
Table 1: Coefficient ranges,
baseline values and measurement
delay transfer function

min base max

L7 3 10 13
L< 16 31 314
L>N (0) 0.08 0.16

Figure 4: Active power control loop: swing equation with damping (feedforward and
feedback), linearized grid reactance, measurement delay
This paper was presented at the 13th Wind Integration Workshop (Berlin, 13 November 2014) and published in the workshop proceedings.

Figure 7: Rotor Inertia, Generator Control and SIC

behavior results.
F. Interaction with wind turbine control
The task of the generator control in a wind turbine is to maximize
energy production under varying wind conditions. From rotor
aerodynamics, the optimal torque for each rotational speed can be
derived. Measuring rotor-speed and applying the corresponding
optimal torque to the generator results in robust and reasonably
Figure 5: Pole Zero Map for the high/low damping base fast tracking of the maximum power point. The maximum power
scenarios (red) with variations of reactance/inertia (blue is usually extracted by applying a quadratic characteristic (see
solid high; blue dashed - low); orange: poles in case of Figure 8) according to
active power limitation.
F N = ef& , 11
connection. The baseline inertia constant is = 5(. with rated quantities as per unit base values: rated speed ef&,F =
In the root locus of Figure 5, the solid blue curve indicates the 1 g. 2. and rated torque F N,F = 1 g. 2. . Further assuming the
pole location for deviations of impedance and inertia with high range of rotational speeds to be 0.5 J ef& J 1 (p.u.), a range for
damping (red X, L>N = 0.08) these are treated together as the the slope of the generator curve can be determined from:
product of both coefficients L7 L< . From the root locus, we can hijkU 12
=L =2 o as ef&
conclude that the SIC loop is stable for the full parameter range. h lmn
For low inertia constants or stiff grid connections (high L7 L< ), a 1 J Lo J 2. 13
real pole pair may appear and cause an aperiodically damped The torque reference F N ( will be adapted by the SIC loop
behavior (which might be undesired, see Section H). For the according to the transfer function
( L>N L< L7 ( H L< L7
parameter range considered, this can be prevented by setting a
MF+>
lower damping (dashed blue curve). In either damping case, = . 14
towards high inertia and/or low grid stiffness values (L7 L< 5 , F N ( ( H XL>N L< L7 Y( H L< L7
The poles of this transfer function are the same as in 9 with
the system is becoming slower and less damped.
Note: The measurement dynamics might become relevant if the
SIC loop shall be made very fast by setting extremely low resulting denominator time constants below 0 c 0.2(. We can
(high L< ). assume this to be very small compared to the time constant of the
generator control loop on the left of Figure 7 and identify the
E. Example: Inertial response transfer function of rotor speed depending on the grid-side torque
We will now look into the behavior of the SIC controlled inverter as
in conjunction with a synchronous machine. The two generator ef& ( 1L o
= . 15
( 2 ef& Lo ( H 1
system (Figure 2) is applied, where the SIC model is augmented
MF+>
by the measurement delay. Apart from that, the synchronous
machine (SM) has a damping ratio of _ = 0.1 and its effective The approximate time constant of the generator control loop is
reactance is = = 0.2 (sum of transient reactance and transformer). therefore opq = 2 ef& Lo r 5 10(. This means that the rotor
The inertia constant for both systems is = 5(. In Figure 6, the speed will follow a grid-side torque request with a time delay in
damping variants are compared. Due to the lower effective that range.
reactance the SIC supplies a higher power share in the first instant. The inertial response will cause a transient torque component that
The overall damping is increased by the SIC in both cases. is added to the reference torque from the generator curve (Figure
However, the high damping variant causes a power dip of the SIC, 7). The rotor will decelerate due to the slow time-constant (see
resulting in a power peak of the SM. In the low damping scenario,
0.025
the oscillation amplitude is reduced but a more oscillatory
SIC with Generator Curve 0.02
Pgrid / p.u.

0.015

0.01

0.005

0
0.1 0 5 10 15 20
Time (seconds)

Figure 8: Generator Figure 9: Inertial response in

Figure 6: Inertial response of a Synchronous machine curve and linear partial load opertaion of the
and an SIC Inverter; Low vs. High Damping at SIC approximation wind turbine (green)
This paper was presented at the 13th Wind Integration Workshop (Berlin, 13 November 2014) and published in the workshop proceedings.

15 ) in the range of 5 to 10 seconds of the rotor controlled by the

generator curve, the inertial response will only be compensated by
the generator curve slowly. The inertial response of the linear
model of the SIC controlled wind turbine with active generator
control in below-rated wind conditions is shown in Figure 9. The
contribution to the deceleration phase is reduced within several
seconds due to the generator control. The rotor continuously
tracks optimum wind speed and there is no need for a dedicated
recovery phase. The duration of the inertial response will fit
quite well to common time constants of primary control, but
adverse effects are possible. If a prolonged contribution is
required due to slow primary control, the generator control would
have to be switched to a special inertial response mode, and
afterwards to a recovery mode.
The aforementioned is valid for partial load conditions. At above-
rated wind speeds, the turbine operates at nominal power and the
torque reference is independent of rotor speed, i.e. Lo = 0. The Figure 10: Power limitation during Inertial Response by
rotor speed will be controlled at nominal speed by the pitch using an Adaptive Inertia Constant
controller. In that case, the inertial response of the SIC loop will
not fade out with decreasing turbine rotor speed (blue curve in
Figure 9). G. Power Limitation Scheme
The above analysis has been confirmed by nonlinear simulations
We will now introduce an important feature: the ability to limit the
which include rotor aerodynamics and a full wind turbine
power offsets induced by the external grid conditions. In the case
controller. The two-generator system (see Figure 2) has been
of an exceptionally short distance to the load during the inertial
modified to include one conventional power plant and one wind
response, the power electronic hardware has to be protected from
turbine with SIC control. The simulation scenario is a power
excessive currents. If there is danger of aerodynamic stall during
system which consists of 50% wind generation capacity and 50%
the inertial response, it may also be desirable to limit grid-side
conventional capacity at a system load of 60% total capacity. The
power. The limitation must however only be activated during
conventional power plant is responsible for primary control, while
exceptional situations otherwise, the contribution to the system
the wind turbine contributes an equal share to system inertia
inertia would not be guaranteed.
proportionally to the plant capacity. The results for wind speeds of
six, nine and 14 ms are given in Figure 11. In each case, the
We have so far explained that the time constant of the SIC loop
depends on . At a reduced inertia constant of a single unit and
frequency curve is compared to a baseline scenario with 100%
constant system inertia, the synchronization phase is faster and the
conventional capacity and no wind power. We can observe that
contribution to the deceleration phase is reduced proportionally.
the wind turbine will supply the higher power share during the
Therefore, the controller simply has to monitor active power and
synchronization phase, as its effective impedance is lower. The
reduce the inertia constant if the upper limit is violated.
inertial contribution of the wind turbine is almost independent of
In the example shown in Figure 10, the converter power shall be
limited to g#+ = 1.05 g. 2.. Once the limit is violated, the inertia
wind speed during the first seconds of the response. In partial load
constant is switched from 5( to 0.5( . This at the same time
conditions, the effect of the generator control loop can however be
noticed after about two seconds, when the frequency slope is
accelerates synchronization and reduces the contribution to the
becoming steeper than in the baseline scenario, due to the effect
deceleration phase. The power returns to below the limit within 15
illustrated in Figure 9. With enabled primary control, the
milliseconds in the example. The inertia constant is slowly
frequency minimum is influenced very little. In full load operation
increased back to the normal level afterwards. This simple but
of the turbine, the inertial response is equal to the 100%
effective adaptive extension of the SIC loop is, to the authors
conventional generation scenario. This example demonstrates the
knowledge, the first demonstration of a high-bandwith power
potential of Synchronous Inertia Control under various
limitation of a virtual synchronous machine of voltage-source
instantaneous shares of wind power. To enable the operation in a
type.
100% wind power scenario, a primary control functionality would
have to be added to the SIC loop.

Figure 11: SIC Performance under different wind conditions; Nonlinear model including Wind Turbine Control and
Aerodynamics.
This paper was presented at the 13th Wind Integration Workshop (Berlin, 13 November 2014) and published in the workshop proceedings.
H. Discussion of damping
The SIC control scheme allows to choose damping freely. From
the above examples, we can see that damping of oscillations of
synchronous machines is also increased. However, there is a trade-
off as for higher damping in the SIC converter, the load is not
equally shared during the transition from the synchronization
phase to deceleration phase. When either the grid reactance
changes or the inertia constant is modified (e.g. by the proposed
power limitation scheme), damping will also change, as we can
easily see in the root locus in Figure 5. The pole location is
influenced by the power limitation, as L7 L< is increased (tenfold
in the example). Then, the root locus moves from the baseline
point (red cross, L>N = 0.08 along the blue circular curve
towards the real axis, where a transition to two real poles occurs
(orange cross). At low baseline damping, the poles remain
complex, as indicated by the orange crosses on the dashed blue
curve. It is therefore important to consider the normal pole
location, but also the location in the power limitation mode. So
far, we have however simplified: The root locus above is only
valid for the isolated system. Once interconnected with other
generators, there will be a number of modes with various damping
ratios.
IV. CONCLUSION
The Synchronous Inertia Control scheme allows supplying system
inertia to a power system and to actively increase the damping of
oscillatory modes while allowing to omit the primary control
contribution. To the authors knowledge, this is the first time that
this kind of VSM scheme that is based solely on the swing
equation has been suggested as a synthetic inertia controller for
wind turbines. This scheme offers the core functionality of a
synchronous machine: it provides an internal AC-voltage source
that inherently synchronizes with other synchronous machines or
VSMs in the power system. The scheme to integrate the VSM
with the generator system has, to the authors knowledge, not been
proposed before. In contrast to other synthetic inertia methods, the
SIC scheme supports the power balance instantaneously. The
suggested Adaptive Inertia power limitation scheme addresses one
major restriction of converter technology: a reduced capability to
deal with short-term peak currents. The combination of SIC with
Power Limitation was successfully evaluated in a nonlinear model
under different wind conditions. The inertial response of the
simple power system under consideration was almost constant,
although 50% of the generation capacity was replaced by
converter-based generation in comparison to the baseline scenario.
The damping properties of the SIC are promising and should be
further investigated.
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