PV-Supercapacitor Tri-port Converter for Frequency Response Services

Frequency Response Services (FRS) have taken a special space among the family of ancillary services required for the stability of the Power Systems (PS). Falling of system inertia, being the inherent capability of the classical rotating generator-based PS, has become a serious concern with the increase in inertia-less renewable energy sources like solar PV Systems (PVS). Hence, it draws the attention of the research community on how to emulate equivalent response from the PVS, either the existing ones or the future installations. Additional Energy Storage (ES) plays a vital role in providing Synthetic Inertia (SI) to the PVS. Super-capacitor (SC) has taken unique stand among the existing ESs due to its faster response, burst power handling capability, and longer life cycle. In this paper, a novel single magnetics (Inductor) based compact, non-isolated Tri-Port Converter (TPC) has been proposed. This allows the designer to integrate a low voltage SC unit to the PVS without the need of a high gain converter. The aim is to emulate SI in the grid connected PVS to provide the major FRS to the PS such as Inertial Response (IR) and Primary Frequency Response (PFR). Finally, the proposed TPC and the implemented control is verified via simulations in MATLAB/SIMULINK.