Transient Angle Stability of Virtual Synchronous Generators Using Lyapunov’s Direct Method

With an increasing number of distributed energy resources integrated into the power system, inverters need to take on the corresponding responsibility for the security and stability of the system. Virtual synchronous generators (VSGs) are proposed to mimic dynamic characteristics of traditional rotational synchronous generators (RSGs) to compensate for the loss of inertia and reserve capacity. Similar to RSGs, VSGs will experience transient angle instability under certain conditions, which likely threatens the system security. In this paper, transient angle stability of a VSG is investigated by Lyapunov’s direct method. The deteriorative effect of reactive power control loop on transient angle stability is first analyzed and then voltage variation is incorporated into an approximate Lyapunov’s direct method. In this method, the inverter internal voltage is treated as a parameter rather than a state variable. Moreover, the influence of different parameters on transient angle stability is studied. Finally, an enhanced control strategy is presented to improve the transient angle stability by adjusting the reference power. Numerical simulation results are presented to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method and the enhanced control.