Virtual inertia grid control with LED lamp driver

Soon, rotating inertia of generators use for grid control must be replaced due to the growth of distributed renewable energies. Here, we propose to let also electronic loads contribute to future virtual inertia. It is suggested to use DC link capacitors of power supplies for this task. This requires 5 W, 50 J and a capacitor size of about 200 cm³ per installed kW, corresponding to the size of single phase DC link capacitors. It is shown that the additional power ripple (and thus current ripple) is in the order of 0.1% and the voltage ripple of the intermediate voltage will typically remain between +/-3.6%. The related control can be easily extended by adding a voltage signal to the control voltage, which is proportional to the frequency deviation. Then, the existing power factor correction controller inherently sets the required additional power fluctuation required for the virtual inertia function.