Three-phase grid-connected converters are widely used in renewable energy systems, industrial drives, and electric vehicle charging systems, with the goals of achieving bidirectional power conversion between the AC grid and DC systems, regulating the ...
Three-phase grid-connected converters are widely used in renewable energy systems, industrial drives, and electric vehicle charging systems, with the goals of achieving bidirectional power conversion between the AC grid and DC systems, regulating the DC-link voltage, and maintaining power quality. Conventional grid-connected three-phase converters typically assume a balanced grid voltage condition for their control schemes. However, in actual systems, grid voltage unbalance is common, and in fault scenarios, severe unbalances may occur. Therefore, it is crucial to ensure stable operation and maintain power quality even under unbalanced grid conditions, which has led to significant research efforts in this area.
These converters usually employ synchronous reference frame control based on d–q transformation. However, under grid voltage unbalance, the advantage of having DC control variables in the synchronous frame is lost, as they turn into AC quantities, and independent control of active and reactive power becomes infeasible. Accordingly, many prior studies have proposed modified control algorithms that maintain DC values for the control variables in the d–q frame even under unbalanced grid conditions. However, due to the use of filtering components and sequence separation algorithms, these approaches often exhibit limited dynamic performance, especially under rapidly changing grid conditions such as faults.
To address this, many studies have also explored stationary reference frame control methods. These are primarily divided into two types: control using α–β transformation and line-to-line voltage-based control, which directly utilizes measured line-to-line voltages without requiring transformation. In this paper, the latter method is adopted, as it simplifies the algorithm by removing the need for α–β conversion and additional control structures for unbalanced conditions. This approach enhances dynamic performance in fault scenarios or other rapidly changing grid conditions.
Furthermore, this paper proposes a compensation algorithm that utilizes instantaneous power measurement to correct the current references. Most conventional methods modify current references based on the unbalanced grid voltage to reduce power ripple caused by voltage asymmetry. However, due to parameter mismatches or unpredictable unbalance, complete elimination of power ripple is not feasible. The proposed method not only adjusts the current reference based on grid voltage unbalance but also incorporates real-time compensation using instantaneous power, enabling further reduction of power ripple in steady-state operation. When power ripple is detected, the current reference is adjusted accordingly, significantly reducing steady-state ripple.
Moreover, this method responds effectively not only to static but also dynamic and transient unbalance conditions, enabling the converter to maintain stable operation and reducing the risk of protection trips or output abnormalities caused by grid faults. This is particularly valuable because the proposed current reference compensation technique can compensate for control delays caused by PLL dynamics in real time.
In conclusion, the proposed stationary frame line-to-line voltage-based current control combined with instantaneous power compensation enables effective current control without complex negative-sequence extraction. It provides robust control performance under both steady and transient unbalanced grid conditions, thereby improving both the reliability and responsiveness of grid-connected power conversion systems. The effectiveness of the proposed method has been validated through both simulation and hardware-based experiments.