Abstract-This paper presents a noninvasive online parametric identification of three-phase AC power impedances to assess small-signal stability of grid-tied inverter systems by using well-known impedance-ratiobased stability criteria. The identification technique is integrated into the control of an existing grid-tied inverter for the estimation of wide bandwidth AC grid impedances, on top of its original power conversion function. This is accomplished in practice by injecting a short-time smallsignal Pseudo Random Binary Sequence (PRBS), a digital approximation of white noise which is wide bandwidth in nature, on the inverter control loop so that all frequencies of interest at the impedance measurement point can be excited at once. Then, digital processing is performed in the integrated control platform where the parametric AC grid impedance is extracted from the measurement of voltage and current over the length of PRBS injection. Moreover, a procedure on how to identify the output impedance of the inverter is deployed so that the parametric source and load impedances can be used to verify the system stability by means of the generalized Nyquist stability criterion. The technique is validated via Hardware In the Loop (HIL) realtime simulation. The present work focuses on the identification of balanced three-phase AC impedances in dq reference frame and a dq diagonal-dominant stability analysis which is typical of LV Distribution Grids.Index Terms-Impedance Measurement, Inverters, Power System Stability, Stability Analysis, Stability Criteria I. INTRODUCTIONThe traditional AC Power System is transforming into a PowerElectronics-based AC Power System due to the deeper This work extends previously presented work at COMPEL 2016.integration of Renewable Energy Sources (RESs) and loads through grid-connected feedback-controlled power electronic. This transformation is schematically depicted in Fig. 1, representing an exemplary low-voltage (LV) radial feeder. In Fig. 1 (a), the traditional AC LV feeder is mainly a passive network because the majority of loads are either AC machines, resistive, or diode rectifiers, fed by the MV/LV transformer. In Fig. 1 (b), the counterpart Power Electronics AC LV feeder is an active network where inverters interface the distributed RESs and active rectifiers interface all the loads. In the situation of Fig. 1 (b), it is also envisioned that the MV/LV conversion will be taken by solid-state transformer technology [4]. As power electronics penetrates the AC grid, a new challenge is raising for both power electronic engineers and power systems engineers. This proliferation of grid-connected power electronics can have a destabilizing effect on the AC voltage due to interactions among grid-connected feedback-controlled power electronic converters and equivalent power grid impedances seen at the various Point of Common Couplings (PCCs) [5]-[11]. In the literature, this stability problem has been explained in two ways. The first explanation considers the destabilizing equivalent negative i...

The increment of Distributed Energy Resources -DERs -such as small photovoltaic plants or micro-cogeneration systems together with the increase of Electric Vehicles connected to the grid are bringing new challenges to the Distribution SystemOperators -DSOs. In order to support DSOs to take on these new challenges it is proposed a new framework for the network automation move part of the grid control logics in the substations. With SAU -Substation Automation Unit -monitoring and control functionalities are decentralized and brought nearest to the field with the aim to reduce complexity increasing the network controllability and the system performances.

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The interconnection of power systems in conjunction with faster dynamics, caused by power electronics, increases the complexity of power system simulations for future grids. We propose an open platform as a solution which supports several important features. Grid models are stored in the Common Information Model (CIM) and the platform presents a uniform interface to several commercial and non-commercial Digital Real-time Simulator (DRTS) which can be used in parallel for co-simulation. A web-based interface is used to promote collaboration between research groups during planning and execution of simulation scenarios. Besides, this solution is designed for real-time simulation which allows the integration and testing of hardware components. Several components of the proposed platform have already been used for experiments and are available as open-source.

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