Stability analysis of an autonomous microgrid operation based on Particle Swarm Optimization

This paper presents the stability analysis for an inverter based Distributed Generation (DG) unit in an autonomous microgrid operation. The small-signal model of the controlled Voltage Source Inverter (VSI) system is developed in order to investigate the dynamic stability for the given operating point and under the proposed power controller. This model includes all the details of the proposed controller, while no switching actions are considered. System oscillatory modes and the sensitivity to the control parameters are the main performance indices which are considered, particularly when the microgrid is islanded or under the load change condition. In this work, the proposed power controller is composed of an inner current control loop and an outer power control loop, both based on a synchronous reference frame and conventional PI regulators. These controllers also utilize the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) for real-time self-tuning in order to improve the quality of the power supply. The complete small-signal model is linearized and used to define the system state matrix which is employed for eigenvalue analysis. The results prove that the stability analysis is fairly accurate and the controller offers reliable system's operation.