Possible Power Quality Ancillary Services in Low-Voltage Grids Provided by the Three-Phase Damping Control Strategy

The share of renewable energy is increasing because of environmental concerns and favorable economic conditions. The majority of the distributed energy resources, connected to the low-voltage grid, are inverter-connected units. These inverters are controlled by using specially developed control strategies to determine the power injection between the primary source and the grid. In the past, the connection of distributed energy resources was based on the connect-and-forget principle, but this approach leads to severe power quality problems. Nowadays, more sophisticated control strategies need to be developed, so that ancillary services can be provided to the distribution system operator, which will allow further increase of renewable share in the distribution grids. This article examines the technical capabilities of the three-phase damping control strategy to provide ancillary services to the distribution system operator. Besides the three-phase damping control strategy, the article also compares the classical positive-sequence control strategy. Active power drooping and reactive power exchange are combined with these control strategies and the effect on the annual energy production, power quality, and grid performance is assessed. The simulations are conducted on a Matlab/OpenDSS platform in a time series simulations.