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Low Voltage Ride Through
Abass Afolabi Yahaya
Abstract Large penetration of renewable energy power plants
which are intermittent in nature, have made it more than
necessary for their active participation in the support of system
voltage stability. This active role is placed on renewable sources in
grid code as low voltage ride through capability. Although similar
in most grid codes, there are not always well defined requirements
for solar PV as wind farms in most grid codes. This is partly due
to more wind turbine penetration than PV solar farms. The grid
code requirements and enabling technologies are discussed.
Index Terms grid code, low voltage ride through capability,
solar PV, voltage stability, wind turbine.
I. INTRODUCTION
T HE role and importance of renewable energy systems in
stability of the larger grid has sailed through several
milestones. Earlier on, renewable energy sources such as wind-
turbines and photovoltaic (PV) systems were regarded as non-
reliable and non-dispatchable due to little or no inertia. Hence,
they must be disconnected during grid faults such as low
voltages and short-circuits. This is because during grid voltage
dips, power generated by this renewable sources is higher than
power absolved by the grid, hence the DC link voltage rises,
turbine may run away, and can cause damage to the power
rectifiers and wind turbines and solar PV systems [1]. However,
due to more wind energy proliferation, several researches in
Europe made it possible to expand requirements for wind farm
integration in the grid code [2]. The low voltage ride-through
(LVRT) capability of wind turbines only was first introduced,
then was later applied to PV systems and combined-heat and
power (CHP) plants [3]. LVRT requires
To ensure LVRT capability and requirements stated in grid
codes of several countries, several LVRT technologies have
been proposed in the literature. The crowbar resistance
technique has been proposed with several improvements.
Ibrahim et al [1]proposed the use of active crowbar with blade
pitch angle control thereby allowing the controllability of not
just the crowbar active bypass time but also reducing power
imbalance across the rotor by reducing captured power of the
wind turbine. Vidal et al [4] proposed a set of single-phase dc
crowbars with zero crossing capability that allows
disconnecting the scheme at zero current, eliminating high
voltage problems of three-phase dc crowbars, and making
unnecessary the complex and expensive circuitry of three-phase
crowbars.
Arunkumar et al [5] combined the actions of robust controller
with STATCOM to enhance LVRT capability of resources.
Inclusion of chopper in parallel to the DC link capacitor and
several control techniques for coordinating the complex control
structure are proposed in [13]. It is claimed in [13] that the
crowbar is more effective than the DC-link chopper brake [7].
Several other techniques have been proposed and improved as
shown in literature are enormous, such as the use of FACT
devices and both series and shunt compensation, battery energy
storage system, control of the different converters associated
with wind generators [1]. A mention of several LVRT methods
and techniques proposed in literature is made in [7].
This paper reviews the basics of the need for LVRT capability
of renewable energy systems especially wind turbine systems.
Section II discusses the grid code requirements of major
renewable energy using countries in recent times. Section III
showcases the most common LVRT technologies and briefs
about their operation.
II. GRID CODES AND LVRT REQUIREMENTS
The increase in the integration of renewable energy sources
in large quantities such as wind and PV solar farms, and the
possibility of voltage instability if abruptly disconnected has led
to the inclusion of LVRT requirements in grid codes of several
countries. Before 2003, these sources are required to be shut
down or disconnected, at voltage levels of the point of common
coupling (PCC) beyond safe limits, to protect them from
damages due to symmetrical and non-symmetrical line faults
[1] [2]. However, Germany, via E.ON-Netz, is the first country
to require an LVRT capability in her grid code. The grid code
requires that renewable sources must act like traditional
synchronous generators during voltage dips and faults, thereby
staying online to support the system via reactive power
generation [1]. Thereafter, many other countries with large
amount of wind turbine penetration followed suit. Fig. 1. shows
the graphs of the LVRT requirements of several European
countries which is a voltage-time profile. As voltage stability
support is the most critical part of high penetration of wind
power and PV system plants. The German requirement is the
most stringent as shown in Fig. 1. [4], where power plants must
stay online even at zero grid voltage for a fault lasting 150ms.
LVRT requirements of Spain and Italy have the lowest voltage
level of 20% of nominal voltage and can lasting 500ms. The
plants can only be disconnected at operations below this
threshold lines. The Tables I and II show the LVRT requirement
of several countries in Europe and North America [5].

Fig. 1. LVRT requirements of several European countries grid code [4]
TABLE I [5]
LVRT REQUIREMENTS IN GRID CODES OF EUROPEAN COUNTRIES FOR GRID-
CONNECTED WIND TURBINES
TABLE II [5]
LVRT REQUIREMENTS IN GRID CODES OF USA AND CANADA FOR GRID-
CONNECTED WIND TURBINES
The second LVRT requirement for grid connection is that
during voltage dips, the renewable sources must support the
grid with reactive current injection into the system. This will
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help prevent collapse due to voltage instability. The reactive
power injection requirement in Germanys grid code is shown
in Fig. 2 [6]. Also, renewable energy sources are required to
immediately restart production of active power after fault is
cleared. These requirements are similar for both wind turbine
farms and solar PV systems [7] [8] [9].
Fig. 2. Reactive current LVRT requirements of Germany grid code [6]
III. LVRT TECHNOLOGIES
A. Crowbar
The inclusion of crowbar resistor across the rotor winding is
among the most popular technique in literature to enhance the
LVRT capability of a wind turbine. The crowbar provides
alternative paths for the flow of high rotor currents during grid
side voltage dips, hence maintaining grid connection of the
plant. Thereby, protecting the rotor side converter (RSC) from
damage due to high rotor current, and the turbine from high
acceleration. The crow bar topology is given in Fig. 3.
However, the crowbar operation makes deactivates the RSC,
hence power control is lost, no reactive power grid support is
possible, other function of the RSC are lost and the machines
draws a lot of reactive power from the grid via its stator. To
mitigate this and improve LVRT, the idea of active crowbar has
been proposed with improvements. The active crowbar allows
the controllability of the activation and deactivation of the
crowbar resistance within an optimized bypass time, in order to
allow RSC functions to be minimally affected.
A novel active crowbar technology proposed by Lafferte et
al [12] can detect either rotor over-currents, low stator or high
DC bus voltages. This improved topology is given in Fig. 4.
With the controlled switching of the controlled rectifier and
measured differences of the voltages across capacitors C1 and
C2, the converters are kept save and dangerous high voltages
and rotor currents are managed more effectively [12]. The
provision of additional chopper device to the DC-link as shown
in Fig. 4. is to enhance dissipation of energy in case of large

rotor energy.
Fig. 3. DFIG with crowbar resistance for LVRT requirements [12]
Fig. 4. Novel crowbar topology for LVRT requirements [12]
B. DC Link Brake Chopper
Since during voltage dips on the grid, power imbalance
between the rotor and the RSC is likely to increase the voltage
of the DC bus beyond limits and control, thereby damaging the
RSC and rotor if not controlled or averted. The required control
can be made by placing chopper parallel to the capacitor of the
DC link similar to that shown in Fig. 4. The chopper will
prevent the voltage overshoot by dissipating any excess energy
in its resistor during faults. A simple and more complex
strategies for the control of the DC link chopper are presented
in [13]. The former can control voltage limit but cannot prevent
high rotor current. The enable of the chopper is triggered at
some predefined rotor current which the enable the chopper to
absorb the extra energy. However, it is claimed that the DC link
method is less effective than the crowbar for LVRT capability.
3
C. DC Bus Energy Storage System
Wind energy systems have fluctuating power outputs due to
wind speed spontaneities, hence the use of appropriately sized
energy storage system (ESS) with them will better smoothen
the operations and power delivered. ESS aid LVRT capability
by affording an alternative route for excess currents, rather than
causing DC link capacitor damage [1]. This topology is shown
in Fig. 5. Batteries systems such as lead-acid batteries, sodium
sulfur batteries and vanadium redox flow battery are suitable
for large-scale power energy storage due to high scalability,
long life, cheap materials, low maintenance, and fast response.
Lead-acid batteries is the most common in the market but
vanadium redox flow batteries have some superior features like
higher energy and power density, lower maintenance cost and
longer life time. The ESS method requires more DC converter
and appropriate sizing of the rotor-side converter.
Fig. 5. Energy storage system for LVRT requirements [1]
D. FACTS Devices and Compensators
Several techniques proposed in literature dwell on reactive
power and voltage recovery at the PCC by using FACTS and
compensation devices. Where shunt compensation is decided
by the difference in wind farm reactive power consumption and
availability of reactive power on the grid. Series compensation
is based on capacitive voltage injection to achieve increment in
reactive power transfer from the grid. There are several types of
the two methods. The types of the most proposed and employed
FACTS compensations are shunt compensation subdivided into
static VAR Compensator (SVC) and STATCOM, series voltage
compensation subdivided into thyristor controlled series
capacitor (TCSC), static synchronous series compensator
(SSSC), dynamic voltage restorer (DVR), magnetic energy
recovery switch (MERS), and series and shunt compensations
like the unified power flow controller (UPFC) which is a back-
to-back combination of a shunt converter (STATCOM) and a
series converter (SSSC). Fig. 6. and Fig. 7 each show topology
of shunt and series compensation respectively.
 4

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Energy Conversion , vol. 28, no. 3, pp. 768-781, 2013.
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Fig. 7. A single-phase series compensating MERS [1]
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IV. CONCLUSION
This work has given an overview of the reasons why LVRT
capability is required for renewable energy sources such wind
turbine and solar PV farms due to their large penetration in
concerned countries. An overview of LVRT grid code
requirements is also made. It is seen that not implementing the
LVRT requirement will make the system at the risk of sudden
voltage instability due to faults and cascaded-effect loss of large
wind farms. The most popular methods employed to attain
LVRT capability are discussed.

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