Sharif Digital Repository

This paper proposes to use a back-to-back converter as the interlink between a utility grid and a microgrid. To justify this proposal, two modes of operation are explained and the benefits of the back-to-back converter over conventional static switches are shown. In mode-1, the inter-link converter injects prespecified amounts of active and reactive power to the microgrid. This mode is identified as PQ control mode. Mode-2 is the voltage control mode in which, the back to back converter controls the voltage of the microgrid and maintains the power quality of the current drawn from the utility grid in spite of nonlinear and unbalanced loads in the microgrid  

Due to the technical advances in power electronic industry, employing inverter-based distributed energy resources (IBDERs) are increased in electric power systems. Distributed generators (DGs) with the rating capacity of few megawatts are commonly connected to the distribution level of power systems which are inherently unbalanced. A cluster of IBDERs and loads form a small-scale grid called microgrid (MG) which can operate independent of the main grid. In a MG, grid forming voltage source converters (VSCs) are used to control the voltages and frequency of the MG. However, grid forming VSCs with conventional control schemes cannot do this task properly when the MG is unbalanced. In this... 

This paper presents a shunt active filter control using the instantaneous power theory on a rotating reference frame for power quality improvement in 3-phase 4-wire system. By current space vector mapping on rotating reference frame, three linearly independent components are derived. The defined powers can be controlled by current vector components. The in-phase current vector component to voltage vector is used for compensating oscillatory load active power and controlling dc voltage. Two other components are used to compensate for reactive power and to eliminate neutral current. Advantage of this control strategy is that synchronizing circuit is not required. Simulation results verify... 

A multi-band CMOS LC Quadrature Voltage Control Oscillator (QVCO) with minimum power consumption is developed to meet the phase noise and frequency band requirements of RFID, Zigbee and Bluetooth standards. To accomplish the multi-band receiving architecture at low power consumption, current switching technique with optimized cross-coupled transistor sizes has been used. A comprehensive analysis of small signal model for complementary architecture including transistor noise sources and their effects on output phase noise amount has been discussed. Using extracted small signal model, coupled and coupling transistor sizes for minimum power consumption and the least achievable phase noise have... 

In this paper a new technique called switched-resistor is used as an alternative to switched-capacitor circuits in a low-voltage low-power high-speed A/D converter. Simulation results for an 8-bit 150MS/s pipeline ADC are presented. This converter consumes 20mW from a 1.8V supply and provides an ENOB of 7.5bit. © 2007 IEEE  

The introduction of demand response concept, in addition to increment of penetration of distributed generation (DG) based on renewable energies, make opportunities for the novel control schemes to be integrated in power system on a smart grid framework. Voltage control methods in power systems needs proper coordination among reactive power resources and conventional volt/var control equipments. In this work, potential reactive power resources are investigated and then, reactive power output of renewable DG units and controllable loads along with operation of conventional voltage controllers are optimized using a centralized control scheme. Considering the variability of demand and... 

Secondary voltage control is used to re-adjust the reference values of automatic voltage regulators of generators. The performance of the secondary voltage control strongly depends on pilot node selection. In this paper the two proposed control laws for secondary voltage control are discussed and then an immune based algorithm is proposed to solve the optimal pilot node selection problem. The proposed algorithm is based on the clonal selection theory. The merit of immune algorithm lies in pattern recognition and memorization capabilities. Also, to provide independency of electrical zones a decoupling factor based on electrical distance concept is proposed. To verify the network observability... 

This paper presents a robust dc-link voltage as well as a current control strategy for a bidirectional interlink converter (BIC) in a hybrid ac/dc microgrid. To enhance the dc-bus voltage control, conventional methods strive to measure and feedforward the load or source power in the dc-bus control scheme. However, the conventional feedforward-based approaches require remote measurement with communications. Moreover, conventional methods suffer from stability and performance issues, mainly due to the use of the small-signal-based control design method. To overcome these issues, in this paper, the power from DG units of the dc subgrid imposed on the BIC is considered an unmeasurable... 

This paper proposes a new control scheme to eliminate the 3rd harmonic in the output currents of grid-following inverters under unbalanced grid conditions. Unbalanced grids adversely affect the performance of grid-following inverters due to the oscillations appearing on the DC-link voltage with a frequency twice the line frequency. The paper is based on instantaneous active reactive control (IARC) technique due to its advantages over other existing methods. However, the presence of severe asymmetrical 3rd harmonic distortions in the inverter output currents is the main challenge with IARC method, which impairs the power quality requirements. This paper enhances the IARC scheme by proposing a... 

Closeness to the nose point of P-V curve, or loadability limit (LL), and voltage instability is one of the main concerns of modern power systems. Hence, online evaluation of LL has attracted the interest of researchers in recent years. This letter introduces a simple local index for online estimation of closeness to LL, using two consecutive scalar local measurements. This index is achieved based on the fact that variation of the load apparent power is zero at LL. The index is suitable for implementation in numerical relays to stimulate local control actions to prevent voltage instability, and in the system control center for system-wide coordinated analysis and control measures. Simulation... 

In this paper a novel droop approach for autonomous power management in low voltage dc microgrids based on a master-slave concept is presented. Conventional voltage-based droop approaches suffer from poor power sharing due to line resistance effects on a virtual resistance, which is solved a by introducing a communication system to increase the current sharing accuracy. In this paper, a virtual frequency is superimposed by the master units, and slave units determine their output power according to the corresponding frequency-based droop characteristics. Unlike the voltage-droop methods, the proposed virtual frequency-droop approach can be applied for proportional power management among the... 

In this paper, we propose a new voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) with a high oscillation frequency yet low power consumption. The oscillator which is a single stage circuit has a low phase noise due to reduced noise sources. To evaluate the performance parameters, the oscillator was simulated in a 0.18-μm standard CMOS process. The results show that the oscillation frequency of VCO may vary between 4.66-5.9 GHz. Also, the phase noise of the VCO at oscillation frequency of 5.6 GHz is -99.7 dBc at 1 MHz offset frequency. Also, the power consumption was 4.8 mW at the same oscillation frequency. © 2007 IEEE  

This paper presents an investigation of power quality problems arising from electric arc furnace (EAF) operation, and the required compensating system capabilities. It also proposes a compensation system using a shunt active filter and a series inductor. A shunt active filter compensates for the reactive power and the current harmonics of the highly varying load. Reference signals for the compensation logic are obtained from the instantaneous current vector components on a rotating reference frame. Due to noninteger harmonics on voltages at the point of common coupling, conventional methods for the inverter dc bus voltage regulation fail to perform properly. Hence, a new method is introduced... 

A very low power CMOS, 1.5V, 2.5GHz prescaler was designed. Implemented in 0.25u standard CMOS technology, this prescaler can operate up to 3GHz range. The prescaler consists of three delay flip flops (DFF) that work synchronously with RF sinusoidal clock and divides by 4 or 5 according to control signal  

A 5GHz, 1.5 Volt and low power CMOS frequency synthesizer with LC-tuned VCO (voltage controlled oscillator) is presented. The synthesizer consists of an LC-tuned VCO, an injection-lock frequency divider, a very low power prescaler which brings 2.5GHz range frequency to 11 MHz, a phase-frequency detector and charge-pump with improved architecture. Spiral inductors with Q-factor of 9 are used for the LC-tuned 5 GHz VCO. A fixed 2 frequency divider based on injection-locking phenomenon is used to bring 5 GHz VCO frequency to 2.5GHz. Both VCO and injection-locked divider's oscillators are tuned with NMOS varactors with their bodies are grounded, resulting in about 700 MHz tuning range.... 

Medium power distributed energy resources (DERs) are commonly connected to medium voltage distribution systems via voltage source converters (VSCs). Several guidelines and standards have been developed to establish the needed criteria and requirements for DERs interconnections. In this respect, it is preferred to reinforce the VSC fault ride through (FRT) capability, which considerably minimizes the DG outage period and reconnection time and results in a resilient system against short circuits. Considering the significant number of asymmetrical faults in distribution systems, the VSC response in such conditions must be investigated, and consequently, its FRT capability must be reinforced. In... 

Medium power distributed energy resources (DERs) are commonly connected to medium voltage distribution systems via voltage source converters (VSCs). Several guidelines and standards have been developed to establish the needed criteria and requirements for DERs interconnections. In this respect, it is preferred to reinforce the VSC fault ride through (FRT) capability, which considerably minimizes the DG outage period and reconnection time and results in a resilient system against short circuits. Considering the significant number of asymmetrical faults in distribution systems, the VSC response in such conditions must be investigated, and consequently, its FRT capability must be reinforced. In...