Leibniz MMS Days 2020 - Abstract
Dörfler, Florian
The electric power system is undergoing a period of unprecedented change. A major transition is the replacement of bulk generation based on synchronous machines by renewable generation interfaced via power electronics. The loss of synchronous machines poses a great challenge because today?s power system operation heavily relies on their self-synchronizing dynamics, rotational inertia, and resilient controls. The robust operation of such a low-inertia system based on power electronics is currently regarded as the ultimate bottleneck to massively integrating renewables. As a possible remedy, numerous approaches aim at emulating so-called virtual inertia or other characteristics of synchronous machines. In this talk we investigate ?how? virtual inertia can be emulated, and ?what else? can be done other than naively emulating synchronous machines. We will discuss a novel and foundational control approach based on self-synchronizing coupled oscillators and report some theoretic results as well as experimental validations.