Ideally-Smooth Transition between Grid-Forming and Grid-Following Inverters based on State Mapping Method
This addresses a practical issue for renewable energy integration by enabling stable mode switching in power inverters, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing mode concepts.
The paper tackles the problem of switching between grid-forming and grid-following inverter modes, which can cause oscillations or instability, by proposing a state mapping method to achieve an ideally-smooth transition, verified through theoretical analysis and experiments.
There has been widespread global increasing use of renewable energy sources, which are usually connected to the electricity grids via power electronic inverters. Traditionally, these inverter-based resources operate in either grid-forming (GFM) or grid-following (GFL) mode. But more recently, the need of switching between these two modes are glowingly required because of the complex operation scenarios of systems such as source-side limitations, grid-side services, fault disturbances, etc. However, due to the differences between GFM and GFL modes, a direct switching between them would lead to large oscillations or even instability of inverters. Therefore, in this paper, a method called state mapping method for analyzing the switching transient and designing the switching control is proposed. Based on this method, an ideally-smooth transition between GFM and GFL can be achieved. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by both the theoretical analysis and experiment tests.