1

Validation of a STATCOM Transient Stability Model through Small-Disturbance Stability Studies

Hassan Ghasemi hassan.ghasemi@ieso.ca Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) Station A, Box 4474 Toronto, Ontario, Canada Claudio A. Ca izares n ccanizar@engmail.uwaterloo.ca Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Waterloo Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, N2L 3G1

Abstract Synchronous STATic COMpensator (STATCOM) controllers are being more prevalently used to address some voltage and angle stability and control problems, especially in distribution systems with the advent of microgrids. Thus, this paper discusses the validity of a typical transient stability (TS) model of a STATCOM widely used in small-disturbance stability studies of large, interconnected power grids as well as microgrids. EMTDC/PSCAD-based time domain simulations for both TS and detailed models, with a standard control and a supplementary control, are used as the basis for comparison and validation. A system identication technique, i.e. the Prony method, is applied to the time domain signals to extract relevant electromechanical mode information, illustrating that, under certain conditions, typical STATCOM TS models can yield too optimistic results, which may lead to errors in power system planning and operation. Index Terms FACTS, STATCOM, small-disturbance stability, oscillatory stability, system identication, modeling, damping controls.

I. I NTRODUCTION Power system operators are constantly striving to keep power networks secure by guaranteeing sufcient security margins, which is a difcult task considering the uncertainties in demand and supply levels and dispatch patterns, especially in deregulated environments. On the other hand, angle, voltage and frequency stability and control issues are quite relevant in the design and operation of microgrids, given the large reactive power demand and the low inertia and damping of their power sources, which are mainly induction generators interconnected through converters [1]. A variety of off-line system studies are typically performed to determine the appropriate security margins that should be used in real-time system operation of large, interconnected power grids as well as microgrids. These studies are mainly classied into voltage stability and angle stability, and are carried out in short-, mid- and long-term time frames, based on a variety of system models represented by differentialalgebraic equations (DAEs). DAE models are vital in power system analysis, since choosing models with different degrees of complexity would yield different results. For instance, stability limits have been shown to change signicantly for different load models [2], [3], [4], [5]; generator and exciter
This research was partially supported by OGSST and NSERC, Canada.

modeling also plays a signicant role in stability studies of power systems [6], [7], [8]. Since power system models used in stability studies are rather large, their analysis presents signicant computational challenges. Therefore, simplied power-ow and transientstability (TS) models have been developed to reduce computational and analysis burdens (e.g. larger integration time steps and smaller state matrices). These reduced models are the ones typically used in power system analysis packages, and have been usually validated by comparing time-domain signals obtained for both simplied and detailed models. For instance, the TS models proposed for a series of Flexible AC Transmission Systems (FACTS) controllers in [9] were validated mostly by inspection of the time-domain simulation results. Thus, there is clearly a need to validate these TS models from the point of view of their effect on the system electromechanical modes, since these modes are important when FACTS controllers are used to enhance both large- and small-disturbance stability [10], [11], by adding, for example, supplementary damping controls [6], [12]. This issue is even more critical in the case of microgirds, since certain FACTS controllers, particularly STATCOMs, are being considered as a possible solution for some of the voltage and angle stability problems inherent to these power grids. Consequently, typical STATCOM models are validated here using system identication techniques to extract the relevant electromechanical mode information from time-domain signals [13], [14], [15]. System identication techniques are used to readily and directly compare fairly distinct STATCOM models, thus avoiding matrixbased eigenvalue studies of complex system models and/or modeling approximations. The paper is structured as follows: Section II presents a brief overview of the STATCOM and its typical control strategies, i.e. phase- and PWM-based controls; a typical STATCOM TS model is also explained in some detail in this section. In Section IV, the Prony method, which is a well-known system identication method widely used in power system applications, is briey explained. In Section V, time domain simulation results for both TS and detailed STATCOM models are compared and analyzed by means of system-identicationbased studies; the comparison is done for a controller with a basic control and with a supplementary control designed to suppress power oscillations. The main contributions of the

V 0

V = Vm cos

io

3 Phase
Magnitude (rms)

Phased Locked Loop (PLL) for Synchronization max

Coupling Transformer
Vref

+ +
Tw s 1 + Tw s
PI Controller

0 360 o

conv +

Gate Pulse Generator

Vout conv

min

Supplementary Control

Fig. 2.

STATCOM control block diagram with phase control ( = t).

V = Vm cos

Magnitude (rms)

Phased Locked Loop (PLL) for Synchronization max

- V dc
Fig. 1. Basic STATCOM structure.

+
V ref

K pm +
max

0 360 o

Vdc

K Im s

ma
Gate Pulse Generator

Vdc ref

+ +

K p +
min

K I s

min

conv

paper are summarized in Section VI. II. STATCOM M ODELING Shunt compensators are primarily used for bus voltage regulation y means of providing or absorbing reactive power; they are effective for damping electromechanical oscillations [10], [11]. Different kinds of shunt compensators are currently being used in power systems, of which the most popular ones are Static Var Compensator (SVC) and STATCOM [16]. In this work, only the STATCOM, which has a more complicated topology than a SVC, is studied. The STATCOM is a FACTS controller based on voltagesourced converter (VSC) technology. A VSC generates a synchronous voltage of fundamental frequency and controllable magnitude and phase angle. If a VSC is shunt-connected to a system via a coupling transformer as shown in Fig. 1, the resulting STATCOM can inject or absorb reactive power to or from the bus to which it is connected and thus regulate bus voltage magnitudes [16], [17], [18]. The main advantage of a STATCOM over a SVC is its reduced size, which results from the elimination of ac capacitor banks and reactors; moreover, a STATCOM response is about 10 times faster than that of a SVC due to its turn-on and turn-off capabilities. The active and reactive power exchange between the VSC and the system in Fig. 1 are a function of the converter output voltage denoted as Vout , i.e. Vout V sin conv (1) P = X 2 Vout Vout V cos conv Q = (2) X where conv is the angle between the ac system voltage V and Vout , and X denotes the reactance of the coupling transformer.

Tw s 1 + Tw s

Supplementary Control

Fig. 3.

STATCOM control block diagram with PWM control ( = t).

Two control strategies may be used for a STATCOM, namely, phase control and PWM control. With phase control, the dc bus voltage Vdc is regulated by changing conv , i.e. charging and discharging the dc capacitor, which ultimately controls Vout , as this voltage is proportional to Vdc ; the block diagram of a phase controller is shown in Fig. 2. On the other hand, with PWM control, both the angle and the magnitude of the converter output voltage are regulated as shown in Fig. 3. Although low frequency harmonics can be reduced using PWM control, the high switching losses due to the high switching frequencies are the main constraints for its application in transmission systems. For the case where the output voltage of the STATCOM is balanced and harmonic free, a TS model that does not include converter switching phenomena has been proposed and developed in, for example, [9], [12]. This model, which is an improved model of other similar STACOM TS models widely utilized in TS studies, is based on the power balance between the controllers ac power P and dc power Pdc under balanced operation at fundamental frequency, since TS models are based on the assumption of balanced three-phase voltages at fundamental frequency, i.e. P = Pdc + Ploss (3)

V V

I I
P+jQ

The original Prony method calculates i and Ri as follows:

Filter 1:a

Magnitude _
Vref

1) Consider that (5) is the solution of the difference equation with order n: y[l] = a1 y[l 1] a2 y[l 2] . . . an y[l n] (7)

+
R+j X

This can be written in matrix form as:

Controller
Vdcref

conv

k Vdc conv

Y = D where

(8)

ma (PWM) _

+
Vdc

+ _ Magnitude

Rc

Y = [yl+n yl+n+1 yl+n+2 . . . yl+N ]N n+1 = [a1 a2 . . . an ]T

D=

(9) (10)

Fig. 4.

STATCOM transient stability model and its control [9].

Vout V sin conv = Vdc Idc + Ploss 3a X where a stands for the transformer ratio, Idc is the current in the dc capacitor, and Ploss represents the converter losses. This leads to a STATCOM TS model depicted in Fig. 4, in which the magnitude of the capacitor voltage is determined by the following differential equation derived from (3) [9], [19]: dVdc 3akV Vdc = sin conv (4) dt CX Rc C where the resistance Rc represents the converter losses, which can be signicant, depending on the number of switches and the switching frequency. In Fig. 4, the coefcient k is proportional to the modulation index ma , which for a two level inverter is k = ma /2 2. It has been shown, by means of time-domain simulations, that this TS model response is reasonably close to that obtained from a detailed STATCOM model for transients relatively afar from the controller [9]. III. P RONY M ETHOD The Prony method, proposed in 1795 by Gaspard Riche, Baron de Prony, is a viable technique to model a linear sum of damped exponentials. It was rst used to explain the laws governing the expansion of various gases, and is closely related to the least square linear prediction algorithms used for autoregressive (AR) parameter estimation [20]. In power systems, this method has been used to estimate electromechanical oscillation modes of the system (e.g. [13], [21]). The method is based on a measured signal y(t) being represented in continuous and discrete time, respectively, as a sum of n damped complex sinusoids:
n n/2

yl+n1 yl+n . . . yl+N1

yl+n2 yl+n1 yl+N2

... ... ...

yl yl+1 yl+Nn

(Nn+1)n

(11)

where N is the number of samples. The least square method can be used in this case to compute . , 2) The vector leads to the eigenvalues Zi s of the system, which are the roots of the system characteristic equation: Z n + a1 Z n1 + a2 Z n2 + . . . + an = 0 (12)

3) One may write (6) in a matrix form similar to (8) using the calculated Zi s, and solve for the residues Ri s. The order of the system n is usually unknown. In [14], the rule-of-thumb of an initial guess n = N/6 is proposed. Once the roots of the system characteristic equation are obtained, the poles corresponding to high frequencies, which are known not to be present in power systems, are discarded. This technique, however, may lead to results that depend heavily on the user. Order underestimation results in inaccurate results; on the other hand, higher orders may lead to the estimation of extraneous poles, since the model seeks to t the noise corrupting the signal. A better technique for choosing n is proposed in [22] for communication systems. This method is based on monitoring the singular values of matrix D for n = N/2 . Although the maximum possible order, which can be chosen for the system, is N/2, the practical order of a matrix is equal to the number of its largest singular values. Thus, for 1 2 . . . n . . . N/2 , if n+1 n+2 ... N/2 0, then n < N/2 is the order of the matrix D. The Prony method is used here to identify critical electromechanical modes, i.e. low damped modes typically associated with undesirable power/frequency oscillations, from time signals obtained from simulating a test system with two different types of STATCOM models, namely, a detailed model and a TS model. This allows to readily compare the different STATCOM models without any signicant approximations or the need for complex linear system analysis techniques, which are the typical approaches used to deal with detailed, three-phase models of the system, especially when VSC-based FACTS controllers are present.

y(t) =
i=1

Ri ei t =
i=1 n

Ai ei t cos(i t + i ) l Ri Zi
i=1

(5)

y[l] =

(6)

where Ri is an output residue corresponding to the mode i = i + ji ; Zi = ei Ts ; Ts is the sampling time; Ai = 2 Ri ; and l is integer time.

G1 ~

G2 ~
Loading Level 100% (900 MW) 130% (1170 MW) 160% (1440 MW) 190% (1710 MW)

TABLE III C RITICAL ELECTROMECHANICAL MODE Detailed Model Mode, Damping -0.5600 j8.11, 6.89% -0.3686 j8.12, 4.53% -0.1993 j8.08, 2.47% -0.0294 j8.02, 0.37% TS Model Mode, Damping -0.5500 j8.11, 6.77% -0.3698 j8.11, 4.56% -0.2170 j8.07, 2.69% -0.0674 j8.00, 0.84%

Load
Fig. 5. IEEE 3-bus test system. TABLE I STATCOM STATIC DATA Rc [] 200 R [] 0 X [] 0.108 C [F] 740

450 PG (MW) 400 350 0.65 (rad) 0.6 0.55

Detailed model TS model

TABLE II STATCOM CONTROLLER PARAMETERS K p 0.06 KI 0.6 K pm 10 KIm 100 Tw (s) 10

10

IV. R ESULTS AND C OMPARISONS Both the STATCOM detailed and TS models are simulated using the PSCAD/EMTDC program [23]. The IEEE 3-bus system (Fig. 5) is used here as the test case to study both models. The base load used at Bus 3 is a 900 MW and 300 MVar load, and is modeled as a constant impedance. Each machine has a simple exciter, and a simple governor is used for the machine at Bus 1. The generators are modeled in detail by means of subtransient models. The corresponding static and dynamic data can be found in [24]. A 200 MVar STATCOM is connected to the Bus 3 through a coupling transformer (-Y, 6 kV/138 kV) to mainly regulate the voltage at Bus 3. By adding a supplementary control loop (Fig. 3), the STATCOM may also be used for damping oscillations. The data for this FACTS controller are illustrated in Tables I and II. The STATCOM detailed PSCAD model includes all switches and the corresponding snubbers. PWM control is applied, with a carrier frequency of 1260 Hz to reduce low frequency harmonics, since harmonic content in the output voltage of the converter can be signicantly reduced by increasing the carrier frequency fc [25]; however, this frequency is limited by the maximum switching frequency that the switches can withstand. A capacitor bank is connected to the Bus 3 to lter high frequency harmonics produced by the relatively fast VSC switching, and it also provides 140 MVar of reactive power at the fundamental frequency for a 900 MW load. For TS simulations, the converter is replaced with the TS model depicted in Fig. 4. A. Standard Control Analysis The STATCOM detailed and TS models are studied for several loading conditions. The Prony method is employed to identify the modal content in the measured G1s output power variations resulting from a Line 2-3 outage and reconnection after 2 cycles. Time-domain signals obtained from the PSCAD simulations are depicted in Fig. 6, showing fairly similar proles for both STATCOM models. Observe in Table III that as the load at Bus 3 increases, the identied electromechanical
G (p.u.)
1

10

1.002 1 0.998

5 6 Time (sec)

10

Fig. 6. Test system response at a 160% loading level without STATCOM supplementary control.

mode becomes less stable, as expected; there is also close agreement between the eigenvalue obtained from the detailed and TS models. These results basically validate previous studies of the STATCOM TS model [9], [19]. B. Supplementary Control Analysis The supplementary control shown in Fig. 3 is added to the STATCOM to damp oscillations. The signal used for this control is usually a local signal such as power or current through the STATCOM adjacent lines; the auxiliary signal used here is the power in Line 1-3, as it yields better results than when using other signals [6]. At the same loading conditions as in the previous case, the critical eigenvalue is again identied again and the results are presented in Table IV. This table and Fig. 7 clearly show the effectiveness of the supplementary control in damping electromechanical oscillations, when compared to the results in Table III. However, the calculated eigenvalues for the TS model in this case are not as close to the ones obtained with the detailed model. Observe that the TS model does a better job at damping oscillations, i.e. the TS model yields more optimistic results from the eigenvalue analysis point of view, which is also illustrated in Fig. 8; this would basically lead to an overestimation of the real stability margin of the power system, which presents potential risks from the point of view of system design and planning. The discrepancy between the two models is better illustrated in Fig. 9, which shows the terminal voltage Vt , the dc bus voltage Vdc and the converters delay angle conv . Observe that the fast transients at the instants when Line 2-3 is tripped

TABLE IV C RITICAL ELECTROMECHANICAL MODE WITH STATCOM

450 PG (MW)

SUPPLEMENTARY CONTROL

Detailed model TS model

Loading Level 100% (900 MW) 130% (1170 MW) 160% (1440 MW) 190% (1710 MW)

G (rad)

Detailed Model Mode, Damping -0.9778 j8.51, 11.41% -0.7038 j8.72, 8.04% -0.4439 j8.76, 5.06% -0.1766 j8.70, 2.03%

TS Model Mode, Damping -1.0252 j8.44, 12.06% -0.8067 j8.63, 9.31% -0.5952 j8.66, 6.86% -0.3641 j8.60, 4.23%

400 350

10

0.56 0.54 0.52 0.5 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

(MW)

(p.u.)
G
1

420 400
1

Without supplementary control With supplementary control

1.002 1.001 1 0.999 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

380 1 0.66 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

(rad)

0.64 0.62 0.6 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Fig. 8. Test system response at a 190% loading level with STATCOM supplementary control.

(p.u.)

1.001 1.0005
Vt (p.u.)
1

0.92 0.9 0.88 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Detailed model TS model 8 9 10

5 6 Time (sec)

10

Vdc (kV)

Fig. 7. Test system response at a 130% loading level with and without STATCOM supplementary control and a controller detailed model.

30 20 10 1 conv (Deg) 0.85 0.8 0.75 0.7 1 2 3 4 5 6 Time (sec) 7 8 9 10 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

and reclosed are not captured by the TS model. This is due to the fact that the TS model is basically a balanced, fundamental frequency controlled voltage source with its magnitude changes being dened by a differential equation with relatively large time constants, whereas in the detailed model, the output voltage is directly affected by fast dc voltage transients. The STATCOM absorbed active and reactive powers depicted in Fig. 10 provide additional insight into the functioning of the different models; thus, notice that the active power, which plays a fundamental role in damping the oscillating power PG1 , is larger in the case of the TS model, hence yielding a more damped system. V. C ONCLUSIONS A widely used STATCOM TS model is studied and compared with respect to its detailed model by means of PSCAD simulations and identied eigenvalues, based on the Prony method. From the electromechanical mode point of view, the STATCOM TS model yields eigenvalues fairly close to those obtained for the controller detailed model when no supplementary damping controls are added to the STATCOM. However, it is shown that optimistic results are obtained when the TS model is used together with supplementary damping controls, which could be a problem for power system designers and operators. These results clearly indicate the need for more accurate STATCOM TS models when studying and designing damping controls. The advantages of using system identication techniques for eigenvalue analysis of complex power system models, partic-

Fig. 9. Internal STATCOM variables at a 190% loading level with STATCOM supplementary control.

10 Pconv (MW) 5 0 5 10 Detailed model TS model

5 6 Time (sec)

10

100 Qconv (MVar) 50 0 50 100

5 6 Time (sec)

10

Fig. 10. STATCOM active and reactive powers at a 190% loading level with STATCOM supplementary control.

ularly for systems with FACTS controllers and microgrids, are clearly illustrated. These techniques allow identifying critical electromechanical modes in systems that contain converters with complex switching without the need for approximations and/or involved analysis techniques, so that important angle stability issues can be properly studied and addressed through the adequate design of damping controls. R EFERENCES
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Hassan Ghasemi (S01) received his BSc and MSc degree from the University of Tehran, Iran in 1999 and 2001, respectively, and his PhD degree from the University of Waterloo, Canada in 2006. He pursued research on analysis and design of machine drives during his master program, and worked at Jovain Electrical Machines Co. (JEMCO) as an electrical engineer in 2000-2001. His current research interests are on power system stability and modeling, and applications of system identication to stability limit prediction and transient stability model validation. He is currently with the Models and Data Group at the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO), Ontario, Canada.

Claudio A. Canizares (S86, M91, SM00, F07) received in April 1984 the Electrical Engineer diploma from the Escuela Polit cnica Nacional (EPN), e Quito-Ecuador, where he held different teaching and administrative positions from 1983 to 1993. His MS (1988) and PhD (1991) degrees in Electrical Engineering are from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Ca izares has n held various academic and administrative positions at the E&CE Department of the University of Waterloo since 1993 and is currently a Full Professor. His research activities concentrate on the study of stability, optimization, modeling, simulation, control and computational issues in power systems in the context of electricity markets.