Electric Power Systems Research 182 (2020) 106207

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Electric Power Systems Research

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/epsr

Autonomous reactive power support for smart photovoltaic inverter based T

on real-time grid-impedance measurements of a weak grid
Henrik Aleniusa,*, Roni Luhtalab, Tuomas Messoa, Tomi Roinilaa
a
Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences, Tampere University, Finland
b
Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences, Tampere University, Finland

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: A large share of renewable energy production is connected to a weak grid with significant grid impedance. The
Power electronics transmission impedance causes unintended flow of reactive power to grid, coupling the grid reactive power to
Photovoltaic systems the active power fed from the inverter. The reactive power causes transmission losses, strains the grid with
Power conditioning reactive power requirements, and can even compromise system stability. Requirements on reactive power
Reactive power control
support were recently imposed on new photovoltaic inverters, which are often implemented with proportional
Power flow optimization
power factor control or droop control for local voltage regulation. The present work proposes a method for real-
time compensation of the unintended reactive power, which decouples the reactive power from the active power
of a photovoltaic inverter. Based on real-time measurement of the grid impedance, the unintended reactive
power is estimated and autonomously compensated in the inverter. The method removes the fluctuating reactive
power component, while still permitting unrestricted manual control of the reactive power. Unlike conventional
methods, the proposed method requires no prior knowledge on grid impedance values or delicate tuning. The
method outperforms conventional power factor control even when the conventional method is tuned optimally
with known grid inductance. The method is validated with simulations and experiments on three-phase pho-
tovoltaic inverter connected to a weak grid.

1. Introduction transmission capacity, compromises system stability, and strains the

The share of renewable electricity production has increased rapidly
over the last decade, as the related technologies have advanced [1]. The
most prominent renewable methods are solar and wind power, which
are mostly connected to the grid through power electronics. Large-scale
plants are usually located in remote areas due to space constraints,
which means the transmission lengths to consumption centers are often
long [38,29]. Consequently, the impedance of the transmission line
becomes significant imposing challenges on the performance of grid-
connected converters.
The inverter for renewable production is synchronized to a local
point of connection (PoC), where the measurements are taken for
control feedback. The current fed to the PoC causes an unintended flow
of reactive power when flowing through the reactive grid impedance of
the transmission line. The active power from an inverter operating at
unity power factor (PF) appears as both active and reactive power on
the grid side. Thus, in a weak grid the active power of a PV inverter
becomes coupled with reactive power seen by the grid. Unintended
reactive power increases transmission losses, reduces the maximum
grid with excessive reactive power requirements [31,30,21,38,36]. The
rise of inverter-based distributed generation has provoked new re-
quirements for the grid connection of the devices, which also consider
the reactive power capabilities [11,18].
The reactive power balance of the power system has been tradi-
tionally managed by synchronous generators, capacitor banks [17], and
recently with FACTS devices [24,12,3]. Optimization of reactive power
management has been widely discussed, as the topic is vital for reliable
and efficient operation of the power system [8,25,36,9,33,42]. Several
studies have shown the localized reactive power compensation to be an
effective and favorable method [21,31,33,39,5]. The reactive power of
an inverter is controllable to a great extent, providing a flexible method
for reactive power compensation with no need for additional invest-
ments. Consequently, reactive power control has become integrated
operation in most new PV systems, usually controlled by a system op-
erator, a droop control, or power factor control [8,25,9,39,42]. The
objective of reactive power control is usually either voltage regulation,
reactive power optimization, or a tradeoff between the two [33]. Both
voltage regulation and reactive power flow optimization cannot be

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: henrik.alenius@tuni.fi (H. Alenius).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsr.2020.106207
Received 5 September 2019; Received in revised form 12 December 2019; Accepted 8 January 2020
Available online 24 January 2020
0378-7796/ © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
H. Alenius, et al.
Fig. 1. Simplified grid connection of a remote PV plant.
achieved simultaneously, as the objectives are partially in conflict. In
this work, the reactive power support functions are discussed in the
context of reactive power flow optimization, and voltage regulation
objective is not considered. The multi-objective optimization of reactive
power is beyond the scope of this paper. Several studies have discussed
the use of PV inverters for reactive power compensation [20,33], and
the behavior has been analyzed in simulations [34,35,22,40,23].
Although reactive power control has been extensively discussed in
previous works, feasible and precise method for complete decoupling of
unintended reactive power from active power has not been presented.
The majority of research has focused on local voltage regulation in
distributed systems with high share of photovoltaic generation [14],
while the issues related to fluctuating unintended reactive power have
been discussed less. Power factor control (PFC) is the standard ap-
proach for reactive power management in utility-scale PV plants, in
which the reactive power injection is proportional to active power feed.
This is also known as a Q–P droop control. In order to obtain the op-
timal power factor, the grid inductance must be known [14]. Recent
studies have provided methods for online identification of the grid
impedance [28,2], which can be used to calculate adequate power
factor set point. However, the conventional PFC does not consider the
effect of changing operating point accurately. The reactive power in-
jection from the inverter affects the PoC voltage level changing the Q/P-
relation, which the PFC assumed to be constant. In addition, the un-
intended reactive power is quadratic to the active power making the
coupling nonlinear. Consequently, the conventional PFC achieves ac-
curate decoupling only when the inverter operates at nominal power
level. However, in photovoltaic systems, the active power fluctuates
drastically along with the irradiance conditions and the majority of
time the system operates outside nominal power level. This leads to
suboptimal reactive power compensation when a conventional PFC
method is utilized. Therefore, the previous methods for reactive power
flow optimization achieve only partial decoupling between reactive and
active powers, and additionally, require accurate information on the
grid inductance.
The present work proposes a novel method for accurate and au-
tonomous compensation of unintended reactive power flow resulting
from the transmission line reactance. A continuous real-time grid im-
pedance measurement is used for estimating the transmission in-
ductance [16]. Based on the inductance estimate and output measure-
ments, an internal control algorithm estimates and compensates the
unintended reactive power. This decouples the active power of PV from
2
Electric Power Systems Research 182 (2020) 106207
the resulting reactive power seen by grid. The reactive power can still
be freely controlled in the inverter, but is now set to zero at the grid-
side by default. In addition, a comparison to conventional PFC shows
more accurate reactive power compensation, even when the PFC is
tuned based on known grid inductance. The proposed method offers
two significant improvements over conventional methods; the real-time
impedance estimation removes the need for precise prior knowledge on
grid parameters, and the scheme achieves complete decoupling of re-
active power from the fluctuating active power of the PV inverter in the
complete power range. The proposed method is verified first by simu-
lations and then experimentally in a power hardware-in-the-loop setup
in varying conditions.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 dis-
cusses the origin of unintended reactive power in a weak grid and
presents the conventional power factor control method. Section 3 shows
the methods and implementation for real-time grid-impedance mea-
surement and autonomous reactive power compensation. In Section 4,
the method is applied in a MATLAB/Simulink – simulation for a utility-
scale PV inverter. Section 5 shows experimental results with three-
phase hardware prototype down scaled to kW power range. The op-
eration of the proposed adaptive reactive power compensation is tested
in different grid and irradiance conditions, and in transient scenarios.
Finally, Section 6 concludes the main findings of this work.
2. Reactive power control for transmission optimization in PV
inverters
2.1. Grid connection of distributed generation
Fig. 1 presents the grid connection of a typical distributed genera-
tion (DG) unit. DG is often located in remote areas and the grid con-
nection consists mainly of inductive transmission lines and transformers
[13]. The inductive transmission line consumes reactive power as the
current flows through. If the inverter is operated at unity power factor,
pure active power is fed to the PoC of the inverter (output PoC). How-
ever, at the grid side (grid PoC) the PF is decreased as the reactive power
is drawn from the grid.
Fig. 2 illustrates the voltage and current phasors of the system when
the unity power factor is set to either (a) output PoC or (b) grid PoC.
When the inverter is set to unity PF, the output current is in phase with
the output voltage. On the grid side, however, the voltage and current
are in phase shift of θ, so the grid-side PF is reduced to cosθ, which
Fig. 2. Phasor diagrams when power factor is set to unity at
(a) output PoC or (b) grid PoC.
H. Alenius, et al.
corresponds to reactive power of the transmission line. The phase dif-
ference can be directly compensated by setting the angle of the inverter
output current to match the angle of the grid voltage. This compensates
the unintended reactive power and defaults the grid-side PF to unity.
2.2. Coupling of reactive and active power in weak grids
The unintended reactive power flow depends on the grid current
and grid impedance, which is greater in weaker grids. Weak grid refers
to grid part with high impedance, where the current at PoC has sig-
nificant impact on the local voltages. A short-circuit ratio (SCR) is
commonly used to define the stiffness of the grid, given as
SCR = Vn2/(Sn Zg ),
where Vn is the nominal voltage, and Sn the nominal apparent power,
which typically in DG systems is chosen to be the nominal power of the
inverter. Usually, the inverter has equal (or approximately equal)
power rating than the grid-connecting transformer, which is another
approach to choose the nominal power. The exact values for SCR in
weak grid vary, but a grid with SCR below 5 can be considered weak,
and very high-impedance grids with SCR below 2.5 are known as ultra-
weak grid [39,37,4]. Fig. 3 visualizes the impact of SCR at the output
PoC on the reactive power consumption, PF at the grid PoC, and
maximum active power capacity on the transmission line. The SCR at
remote DG plants is typically very low, so the unintended reactive
power flow becomes significant.
Varying irradiance conditions cause fluctuations in active power of
a PV generator, which results in variance of reactive power consump-
tion of the transmission line. Thus, the active and reactive power be-
come coupled in a weak grid, which can result in unpredicted fluc-
tuations in reactive power. The flow of reactive power increases the
total current in a transmission line, which increases transmission losses.
In addition, this can limit the maximum active power of the line and
even compromise the system stability in the large-signal sense, if the
angle difference in the inverter output current and grid PoC increases
excessively [6]. The loss of stability occurs when the reactive power
flow changes the power angle so that equilibrium point no longer exists,
which is analogous stability issues of synchronous generators when the
grid synchronization is lost [10]. In order to consider the fluctuating
nature of active power illustratively, a concept of equivalent short-
circuit ratio (eSCR) is applied in this work. The eSCR describes the ratio
of short-circuit power to instantaneous power of the inverter (instead of
the nominal power). Thus, an inverter operating at 50% of nominal
power in grid with SCR of 2 corresponds to operation at eSCR of 4.
2.3. Power factor control of inverter
Utility-scale PV inverters rarely operate at unity power factor due to
reactive power requirements [11]. A widely applied method for re-
active power control in current-controlled inverters is power factor
Fig. 3. Impact of SCR on grid side power factor (blue) and on reactive power flow (red). (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader
is referred to the web version of this article.)
Electric Power Systems Research 182 (2020) 106207
Fig. 4. Block diagram of conventional proportional PFC implementation.
control (PFC), where the cosϕ of the inverter is set to other than unity.
(1) PFC provides flexible method to regulate the reactive power output of
the converter by associating reactive power input to active power level.
Some standards require the power factor to be controllable, e.g. from 0.
95cap to 0. 95ind [18]. If the grid impedance can be obtained from the
system parameters or by measurements, the desired power factor can be
calculated from the approximated unintended reactive power at unity
power factor operation (cf. Fig. 2a)
Q line 3Io2 Xg Sn Zg 1
cos = cos atan cos atan cos atan = cos atan
P 3Io Vo ( 3 Vo )2 SCR
(2)
when the resistive component is negligible, where Io and Vo are phase
current and voltage, and 3 Vo = Vn . Fig. 4 shows a straightforward PFC
block diagram utilizing proportional Q/P-ratio for reactive power reg-
ulation, where gain K is given as
K= tan(acos(PF)) (3)
where PF is the desired power factor for the inverter output power.
3. Proposed method for autonomous compensation
Fig. 5 shows a flowchart of the proposed method for compensation
of unintended reactive power flow. The grid inductance is estimated
from a continuous real-time grid-impedance measurement. The in-
ductance value is then used to calculate the resulting reactive power,
which is compensated by setting the output current angle accordingly.
Although the underlying methods have been widely discussed, the real-
time impedance estimation has not been previously applied for unin-
tended reactive power compensation.
3.1. Real-time grid-impedance measurements
Recent studies have presented online methods, which can analyze
the grid impedance in real time. In the methods, the grid impedance
was measured by the inverter itself: the inverter produces a broadband
injection on top of the normal output current, measures the resulting
responses in the grid voltage, and applies Fourier analysis to extract the
3
H. Alenius, et al. Electric Power Systems Research 182 (2020) 106207

corresponding frequency components in both the voltage and current.

The grid impedance is then determined by the ratio between the per-
turbed voltage and current,

U( )
Z( ) =
I( ) (4)

where Z(ω) is the frequency-dependent grid impedance and U(ω) and I

(ω) are the Fourier transformed voltages and currents.
Maximum-length binary sequence (MLBS) is widely used for online
measurements of grid-connected devices [26,19]. The MLBS is a peri-
odic binary sequence, so the measurements can be averaged over
multiple cycles, and the MLBS provides the lowest possible peak-factor
[7]. These features allow relatively low injection amplitude, while still
providing sufficient signal-to-noise ratio. Low injection amplitude is
desirable in continuous measurements for minimizing the output cur-
rent distortion [15]. The MLBS is periodic over the sequence length of
N = 2n − 1 and can be generated using n-stage shift register and XOR-
feedback from specific stages. The frequency resolution of the MLBS is
defined as fres = fgen/N, where fgen is the generation frequency. Thus,
the measurement time for one sequence cycle is Tmeas = N/fgen [27].
In this work, the perturbation sequence is injected from the inverter
side and constructed in the MLBS-generation block inside the inverter
control system. The sequence is generated continuously and injected on
top of the d-component current reference. In the setup, a 127-bit-long
MLBS was generated at 4 kHz, so the frequency resolution was ap-
proximately 31.5 Hz. The perturbed grid currents and voltages are
measured using the output sensors inside the LC-filter, from which the
grid impedance is extracted using Fourier analysis. The obtained grid
impedance is the equivalent impedance of the complete power grid as
seen from the PoC. When approximating the grid impedance to consist
only of resistive and inductive components below 450 Hz, the ima-
ginary part represents the grid inductance. Thus, the grid inductance
can be estimated from

|imag[Zg ( )]| |imag[Rg + jXg ( )]| |jXg ( )| Xg ( )

Lg = = = =
(5)
Fig. 5. Flowchart of proposed compensation method.
where frequency (ω/(2π)) is less than 450 Hz, and Rg denotes the re-
sistance of the grid [16].

Fig. 6. Measured grid impedance at a given time instant (red), analytical impedance (black), and chosen measurement frequencies for inductance estimation (blue).
(For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

4
H. Alenius, et al. Electric Power Systems Research 182 (2020) 106207

Table 1
Frequencies for grid inductance estimation and the closest harmonic frequency
(in 60 Hz system).
Estimation frequency #, mfres

8 9 10 11 12 13

Frequency (Hz) 252 284 315 347 378 409

Closest harmonic (Hz) 240 300 300 360 360 420

Fig. 6 shows the grid impedance measurement at a given time in-

stant. The grid inductance value is calculated from six frequencies given
in Table 1 and then averaged. The currents of fundamental frequency
and integer harmonics may deteriorate the measurement accuracy. The
estimation frequencies can be chosen to minimize the distortions in
estimation by avoiding integer harmonics and using appropriate fre-
quency range. The acquired inductance estimation refreshes every Fig. 7. Phasor diagram for reactive power compensated inverter with an LC-
measurement (every 31.75 ms), is continuously averaged over five filter.
periods, and finally low-pass filtered with 3.1 Hz cut-off frequency.

through an LC-filter. The implementation will be used for simulations

3.2. Compensation of unintended reactive power
and power hardware-in-the-loop experiments. The reactive power
compensation (shown with red) is implemented based on (11) by ap-
The unintended reactive power can be compensated by shifting the
plying measured vod , igd, and igq and estimated grid inductance Lg*. The
output current angle of the inverter to match the grid PoC voltage
filter capacitive reactance is a known parameter by the filter design.
angle. The transmission line with reactance Xg consumes reactive power
The control block produces a compensation term for output current q-
Qg, and a capacitive filter with reactance Xc produces reactive power
component, which compensates the reactive power of the transmission
Qc. The total reactive power loss Qtot is given by
line and filter based on (11), and thus defaults the power factor to unity
Vo2 at the grid PoC. The introduced method does not interfere with the
Qtot = Qg + Qc = 3Io2 Xg 3 ,
Xc (6) operation of normal control schemes of the inverter, and the reactive
power can still be controlled in parallel with the proposed autonomous
where Vo and Io are output phase voltage and current. The reactive compensator.
power equation for dq-domain values is
p
iod
2 p
ioq 2 p
vod
2
1 4. MATLAB/Simulink – simulations in MW-scale
Qtot = 3 + Xg 3 ,
3 3 3 Xc (7)
The method presented was verified with simulations in MATLAB/
3 2 3 2
vod Simulink. A simulation model for a 1 MW grid-connected inverter with
2
Qtot = (iod + ioq ) Xg , an LC-filter was built, where the converter-side inductor of the filter is
2 2 Xc (8)
included in the control dynamics of the converter. Table 3 in Appendix
p
where superscript denotes power-invariant variable and voq is set to B presents the setup parameters.
zero by the inverter synchronization. Thus, the inverter can be con-
trolled to compensate the reactive power of the transmission line by 4.1. Compensation with varying grid inductances
setting Qo = Qtot. Based on instantaneous power theory, the reactive
power of the inverter is given by The proposed method autonomously compensates the unintended
Qo = p p
vod ioq (9) reactive power flow caused by the transmission line, which is verified in
simulations for different grid strengths. Fig. 9 shows the reactive and
The voltage is fixed to output PoC voltage, but the current q-component active powers on the grid side for different SCR values of the inductive
can be freely controlled. The reactive power balance is achieved when grid, when the compensation method is turned on at t = 0.8 s. After
3 2 2
3 vod enabling the compensation, the reactive power settles to zero after fast
p p 2
vod ioq = (iod + ioq ) Xg transient. Table 2 presents the corresponding grid SCRs, reactive
2 2 Xc (10)
powers, power factors, and compensation q-current references in steady
In order to compensate the reactive power, reference must be set the ioq
p
state operation. The unintended grid-side reactive power is accurately
according to (10). The inverter is controlled in the amplitude-invariant compensated, with residual reactive power flow less than 1%.
dq-domain, so the power-invariant variables are transformed to corre- The real-time estimation of the grid inductance makes the com-
sponding amplitude invariants and the compensation current reference pensation method adaptive as the reactive power control adapts to the
is given as grid impedance, which may improve performance in changing grid
2
(iod 2
+ ioq ) Xg conditions. In addition, knowledge on grid parameters and parameter
vod
* =
ioq + . changes is no longer required. Fig. 10 demonstrates the proposed
vod Xc (11)
scheme in changing grid conditions;
With an LC-filter at inverter output and current feedbacks from
inverter-side, the grid current is ig = io − ic, where ic denotes the ca- 1. at 2.0 s: grid impedance doubles (SCR → 3),
pacitor current of the filter. Fig. 7 shows the currents and voltages for 2. at 4.0 s: grid impedance further increases (SCR → 2),
the inverter with an LC filter when ig is set to match vg , and the reactive 3. at 6.0 s: issues are cleared (SCR → 6).
power is compensated (grid PoC PF set to unity).
Fig. 8 presents the implementation of the presented methods to the The figure shows known and estimated grid inductance and grid-
control system of a three-phase PV inverter with grid connection side powers with and without compensation. The grid inductance

5
H. Alenius, et al. Electric Power Systems Research 182 (2020) 106207

Fig. 8. Block diagram of inverter control system with adaptive compensation method.

grid-side powers when the input power of the PV system is linearly

increased, which in turn decreases the equivalent SCR (eSCR) of the
grid. The DC power is increased from 900 to 2100 kW with total grid
inductance of 170 μH, resulting in eSCR decrease from 2.8 to 1.2. The
grid is chosen to be very weak for demonstrating the stability en-
hancement with the proposed method.
Without compensation, the grid-side reactive power increases very
rapidly, destabilizing the system at t = 6.9 s. This corresponds to DC
power of 1500 kW and eSCR of 1.8. Before the stability is lost without
compensation, the unintended reactive power flow is extremely high,
which would require immediate balancing actions. The compensation
Fig. 9. Grid side powers when compensation is enabled at 0.8 s with different regulates the grid reactive power to zero through the power ramp, and
grid SCRs (weakest grid in case 1). the system stability is retained although the grid conditions become
very challenging. In addition, the reactive power is decoupled from the
Table 2 active power, so no changes are seen in the reactive power on the grid-
Steady-state values for grid side reactive powers, power factors, and compen- side.
sation current references.
Case # SCR Uncompensated Compensated 4.3. Decoupling reactive power from fluctuating irradiance
Qgrid (kVAr) PFgrid iq* (A) Qgrid (kVAr)
Shading from clouds can change the irradiance conditions rapidly,
6 10 −65 0.997 −110 −0.36 causing varying input power for the system. In addition, partial shading
5 6 −123 0.991 −231 −0.58 from cloud edges can temporarily increase the local irradiance power
4 4 −200 0.975 −379 0.05 above normal maximum through cloud enhancement [41]. Fig. 12
3 3 −289 0.950 −517 −0.28 presents measured irradiance data from a rooftop PV plant (1st of Au-
2 2.5 −375 0.920 −617 −2.60
1 2 −568 0.837 −755 −6.32
gust 2011), where multiple cloud enhancement peaks occur above
normal maximum of 1050 W/m2. The plant and measurement setup is
presented in [32].
estimation accurately produces correct inductance value with settling In order to test the method in realistic conditions, a 180 s sample of
time less than 1 s, verifying the robustness of estimation method. measured irradiance data is used, which contains high cloud enhance-
Without the scheme, the inverter operates at unity power factor by ment peaks (measured between 12:28:03 and 12:31:03). Fig. 13 shows
default and reactive power drawn from the grid increases based on the the irradiance, active power, and reactive power during the test. The
grid inductance. During the lowest SCR of the grid, 600 kVAr of unin- highest irradiance value corresponds to 1380 W/m2, and causes a mo-
tended reactive power is drawn from the grid without compensation mentary peak in power production, which decreases the eSCR of grid
(60% of active power feed). The compensation method regulates grid- connection from 2.5 to 1.8. Without compensation the reactive power
side reactive power back to zero within 0.5 s from transient, validating varies dramatically up to −80% of nominal active power, and at the
the autonomous compensation method. third cloud enhancement peak (at 128 s) the excessive unintended re-
active power destabilizes the system. The proposed method compen-
sates the grid-side reactive power to zero, meaning that the reactive
4.2. Increase in transmission capacity power becomes decoupled from the active power. Thus, the stability is
maintained with the increased transmission capacity. As the power
The flow of reactive power in the transmission line increases the input varies in the range of tens of seconds, fixed or manually con-
total current and Joule losses in the line. In addition, a large proportion trolled reactive power compensation would be inefficient.
of unintended reactive power may destabilize the inverter in very weak In order to validate the performance increase and enhanced reactive
grids. Consequently, the unintended reactive power imposes limitations power compensation capabilities, the proposed method is compared to
to maximum active power feed from the PV inverter. Fig. 11 shows the conventional proportional PFC (cf. Fig. 4), which has been optimally

6
H. Alenius, et al.
Fig. 10. Estimated grid inductance and reference (above) and grid-side powers during grid fault, which changes grid impedance.
Fig. 11. Active and reactive powers with increasing PV input power with and
without compensation (line and dashed line, respectively).
Fig. 12. Measured daily irradiance on 1st of August 2011.
tuned based on known grid inductance. Fig. 14 shows the grid-side
reactive powers in the fluctuating irradiance scenario for both the
proposed adaptive compensation and PFC. While the PFC provides
significant improvement over the uncompensated system, the fluctu-
ating reactive power component persists and is only reduced in mag-
nitude (ranging from −100 to 100 kVAr). With the proposed method,
the fluctuating component is completely removed. Additionally, the
optimal PFC tuning can be achieved only when the grid inductance is
known, and the method does not account for changes in grid
7
Electric Power Systems Research 182 (2020) 106207
impedance. The proposed autonomous method outperforms the con-
ventional PFC even when it is tuned optimally, and the performance
enhancement is alleviated when the grid impedance is unknown or
varying.
4.4. Manual reactive power control during autonomous operation
Most of the new PV inverters are capable of reactive power support.
The proposed autonomous compensation method defaults the grid-side
reactive power to zero, but does not interfere with external reactive
power control. Thus, reactive power can still be freely controlled in
parallel with the proposed method, but the unintended reactive power
resulting from the inverter itself is automatically mitigated.
Fig. 15 demonstrates the grid-side powers during fluctuating irra-
diance conditions (measured 60 s sample between 10:46:08 and
10:47:08) when additional requests for reactive power input are made
(grid SCR = 2.5). At first, the inverter is controlled to produce
200 kVAr for reactive power support. As the DC power decreases along
with the irradiance, the reactive power balance changes and the re-
active power reference is changed first to 120 kVAr, and then to 0 kVAr.
Finally, a reference of −150 kVAr is given to the inverter at 50 s.
Without decoupling method, the irradiance fluctuation translates di-
rectly to grid-side reactive powers. With the decoupling, the unintended
share of reactive power is fully compensated and the external reactive
power requests are fully met on the grid-side. The reactive power
management is drastically simplified, as the reactive power resulting
from the PV system itself is automatically balanced.
5. Experiments
5.1. Power hardware-in-the-loop setup
The effectiveness of the introduced method for compensation of
unintended reactive power is verified with power hardware-in-the-loop
experiments. Fig. 16 presents a schematic of the experimental setup and
a photograph of the setup is shown in Appendix A (Fig. 23). The setup
consists of a PV emulator (Spitzenberger&Spies PVS 7000), an inverter
H. Alenius, et al.
Fig. 13. Irradiance, active power, and reactive power during cloud enhancement peaks.
Fig. 14. Reactive powers during fluctuating irradiance for conventional PFC
(black) and proposed autonomous compensation (red). (For interpretation of
the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web
version of this article.)
(MyWay Plus MWINV-9R144), an LC output filter, and a grid emulator
(Spitzenberger&Spies PAS 15000). The PV emulator provides the DC
power for the inverter and is manually set to maximum-power point.
The inverter is controlled with a dSPACE real-time simulator, which
also defines the voltage references for the grid emulator. The inter-
connection between the inverter and the grid emulator is realized with
an LC-filter, an isolation transformer, and an additional external in-
ductors acting as transmission line inductance. Step-wise transients are
produced to grid inductance by changing the state of the switch S. The
initial parameters of the test setups are given in Table 3 in Appendix B.
8
Electric Power Systems Research 182 (2020) 106207
5.2. Enabling the autonomous compensation in weak grid
First, the operation is demonstrated by enabling the compensation
and measuring the grid-side reactive powers when the inverter is con-
nected to a weak grid (SCR = 3.2, Lg = 12.9 mH). The method com-
pensates the reactive power consumption of the transmission line,
which sets the grid-side power factor to unity. Fig. 17 presents the
phase A current and voltage at grid side measured with oscilloscope
when the compensation output is enabled (dashed red line). Before the
compensation, a significant phase difference is visible in the grid-side
waveforms resulting in unintended reactive power flow and decreased
PF. The compensation quickly shifts the current phase to match the
voltage phase (by producing adequate reactive power), which results in
pure active power on the grid side. Enabling the compensation adjusts
the current within one fundamental period.
5.3. Adaptation to changing grid conditions
The proposed method utilizes real-time information on the grid
conditions and adapts to changing grid conditions, which drastically
improves performance during abrupt changes in grid impedance.
Fig. 18 shows the measured grid inductance and grid-side reactive
powers when the grid inductance abruptly doubles from 4.9 to 9.9 mH
(e.g. a parallel transmission line is disconnected). If the inverter is
operated at unity PF, the reactive power drawn from the grid increases
significantly. The autonomous decoupling method detects the increased
grid inductance, and regulates the reactive power compensation
H. Alenius, et al. Electric Power Systems Research 182 (2020) 106207

Fig. 15. Fluctuating irradiance and grid-side reactive power with changing reactive power reference for the inverter (dashed black).

accordingly. Within seconds, the reactive power flow returns close to
zero. The settling time results from the averaging and filtering of the
inductance estimate. An inverter with conventional PFC cannot respond
to grid changes, and the tuning would remain unchanged.
5.4. Transmission capacity during power increase
In order to illustrate the improved transmission capacity, the DC
input power of the PV system is ramped up from nominal 2.7 to 5.1 kW.
The total grid inductance is 12.9 mH, so the eSCR is effectively reduced
from 3.2 to 1.7. Fig. 19 shows the grid-side powers during the ramp.
Inverter at unity power factor draws increasing amount of reactive
power from the grid-side during the ramp up. At t = 37.4 s, the reactive
power has increased to 3 kVAr (73% of active power), which destabi-
lizes the system and the setup trips. With the proposed method, the
reactive power remains regulated to zero and the system stability is
preserved. In addition, the reactive power flow without compensation
increases transmission losses, which is seen as decreased active power
flow (−6% when the protection triggers).
5.5. Decoupling reactive power from irradiance
The power input of PV generator depends on irradiance conditions,
and may fluctuate rapidly. The aim of the proposed method is to
mitigate reactive power fluctuations by decoupling grid-side reactive
power from active power feed of PV system. The method is tested with
measured 180 s irradiance data as input power, which contains the
same cloud enhancement peaks as in simulations (Fig. 13). The grid
inductance was chosen to 12.9 mH, corresponding to a weak grid with
3.2 SCR. Fig. 20 shows the active and reactive powers on the grid-side,
with and without decoupling method, and Fig. 21 shows the phase A
current envelope taken from oscilloscope. Without decoupling method,
clear correlation between reactive and active power is shown, which
makes the reactive power management on system level difficult. The
proposed method keeps the grid-side reactive power set to zero by
default, providing accurate decoupling of reactive power. Conse-
quently, irradiance fluctuations no longer translate to reactive power
status of the system. Fig. 22 compares the reactive powers of the pro-
posed method and conventional PFC optimized to match the known
grid inductance, cosϕ = 0.956. Adopting PFC shows significant im-
provement over the uncompensated system, but the system still has
significant coupling in the reactive powers. The proposed method
achieves substantially better decoupling, although a slight over-
compensation occurs at the highest peaks. However, the PFC usually
does not have information on the precise grid inductance, which further
deteriorates the performance of the PFC. With the proposed method,
the grid inductance is continuously estimated, which mitigates this
shortage.

Fig. 16. Block diagram of the experimental setup.

9
H. Alenius, et al. Electric Power Systems Research 182 (2020) 106207

Fig. 17. Oscilloscope waveforms of phase A current and voltage when the compensation output is enabled (dashed red line). (For interpretation of the references to
color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

Fig. 18. Inductance estimate and grid-side reactive powers, with abrupt increase in grid inductance at t = 4.0 s.

active power production. The improved reactive power support miti-

Fig. 19. Grid-side powers when the input power is ramped up.
5.6. Discussion
The experiments validate the concept of the proposed autonomous
reactive power compensation, which decouples the reactive power from
gates the issues in reactive power managements resulting from varying
power flows in systems with large-scale photovoltaic plants. This work
presents the proof-of-concept for the autonomous and adaptive control,
and further work is still required for optimal and robust operation. In
the simulations, the method operated as expected with high precision
and robustness while still having fast response time to changes in the
grid. However, the experimental setup imposed practical constraints on
the accuracy of the method, which resulted in slight inaccuracies in the
compensation are slower adaptation response due to increased aver-
aging of the measurements. The minor errors can be assumed to result
from inaccuracies in measurements (probe calibrations), component
tolerances, and system non-linearities; the experimental inverter has
very high switching deadtime of 4 μs (3.2% of switching cycle) and the
used isolation transformer is known to cause inaccuracies to measure-
ments. The inaccuracies cause cumulative error on the output, which
appears as slight overcompensation in this setup. However, even with

10
H. Alenius, et al. Electric Power Systems Research 182 (2020) 106207

Fig. 20. Grid-side powers and compensation current with 180 s of measured irradiance data.

Fig. 21. Oscilloscope phase A current envelope during the fluctuating irradiance conditions.

all the said inaccuracies and non-idealities, a reactive power decoupling

Fig. 22. Comparison of reactive powers on the grid side when utilizing PFC
(blue) or adaptive compensation method. (For interpretation of the references
to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this
article.)
ranging from 80% to 97% is measured from the grid side and the
method is shown to outperform conventional power factor control. The
inaccuracies would deteriorate the performance of other reactive power
support schemes as well.
At this point, the method is limited to systems where the grid-con-
nection of the inverter is through mainly inductive transmission line.
The further validation of the proposed method (and autonomous re-
active power support in general) is required for more complex systems
with meshed network and multiple parallel devices. For parallel de-
vices, a master-slave configuration could be adopted, where a master
inverter is responsible for the impedance measurements and shares the
inductance estimate to slave inverters. However, these issues remain as
a future topic and are not included in this work.

11
H. Alenius, et al. Electric Power Systems Research 182 (2020) 106207

6. Conclusion conventional proportional power factor control (Q/P-droop), even in

systems where the grid parameters are known by system design. The
Utility-scale photovoltaic systems are often connected to weak grids performance of the proposed method is validated in simulations and
with inductive transmission lines. Power generation flowing through kW-scale experiments, where the tests show improved reactive power
the transmission line causes unintended flow of reactive power to the control, mitigation of reactive power fluctuations, and improved
grid side, as the transmission reactance consumes reactive power. Thus, transmission capacity.
the grid-side reactive power becomes coupled with the active power
production of the photovoltaic inverter, which fluctuates along with
Authors’ contribution
irradiance conditions. The fluctuating reactive power challenges re-
active power management and may cause additional transmission
Henrik Alenius: conceptualization, methodology, validation, formal
losses or even large-signal stability issues. This paper proposes an au-
analysis, writing – original draft. Roni Luhtala: conceptualization,
tonomous reactive power compensation method, which decouples the
software. Tuomas Messo: project administration, funding acquisition.
reactive power from the active power production preventing uninten-
Tomi Roinila: supervision, funding acquisition.
tional fluctuations in reactive power flow. The method estimates the
grid inductance continuously by applying real-time grid-impedance
measurements. Based on the obtained inductance value, the reactive Conflict of interest
power compensation is precise and adapts to different and even chan-
ging grid conditions. The proposed method is shown to outperform the None declared.

Appendix A

Fig. 23. Photograph of the experimental setup.

Appendix B

Table 3
Simulation parameters for inverter and grid.
Parameter Simulation Experimental

Pin Nominal DC power 1 MW 2.7 kW

Vin DC voltage 1500 V 414.3 V
f0 Fundamental frequency 60 Hz 60 Hz
Vg Grid phase voltage 230 V 120 V
fsw Switching frequency 5 kHz 8 kHz
id* Nominal d-current reference 1.97 kA 10.6 A
iq* Nominal q-current reference 0A 0A

CDC DC capacitance 20 mF 1.5 mF

Lc Converter side inductance 60 μH 2.2 mH
Cf Filter capacitance 400 μF 10 μF
Rc Damping resistance 70 mΩ 1.8 Ω
Ltf Transformer inductance 30 μH 0.9 mH
Rtf Transformer resistance 8 mΩ 0.4 Ω
Lg Grid inductance 0…225 μH 0…12 mH

KP−CC Current controller gain 1.134e−4 0.0149

KI−CC 0.0214 23.442
(continued on next page)

12
H. Alenius, et al.
Table 3 (continued)
Parameter
KP−VC Voltage controller gain
KI−VC
KP−PLL PLL controller gain
KI−PLL
fgen MLBS generation frequency
n MLBS sequence length
Iinj MLBS amplitude
ωf1 Filter pole for measurements
ωf2 Filter pole for Lgest
ωf3 Filter pole for iqcomp
References
[1] B.K. Bose, Global energy scenario and impact of power electronics in 21st century,
IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron. 60 (2013) 2638–2651, https://doi.org/10.1109/TIE.
2012.2203771.
[2] M. Cespedes, J. Sun, Online grid impedance identification for adaptive control of
grid-connected inverters, 2012 IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition
(ECCE) (2012) 914–921.
[3] Z. Chen, J.M. Guerrero, F. Blaabjerg, A review of the state of the art of power
electronics for wind turbines, IEEE Trans. Power Electron. 24 (2009) 1859–1875,
https://doi.org/10.1109/TPEL.2009.2017082.
[4] M. Davari, Y.A.R.I. Mohamed, Robust vector control of a very weak-grid-connected
voltage-source converter considering the phase-locked loop dynamics, IEEE Trans.
Power Electron. 32 (2017) 977–994, https://doi.org/10.1109/TPEL.2016.
2546341.
[5] E. Demirok, P.C. González, K.H.B. Frederiksen, D. Sera, P. Rodriguez,
R. Teodorescu, Local reactive power control methods for overvoltage prevention of
distributed solar inverters in low-voltage grids, IEEE J. Photovolt. 1 (2011)
174–182, https://doi.org/10.1109/JPHOTOV.2011.2174821.
[6] D. Dong, B. Wen, D. Boroyevich, P. Mattavelli, Y. Xue, Analysis of phase-locked loop
low-frequency stability in three-phase grid-connected power converters considering
impedance interactions, IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron. 62 (2015) 310–321, https://doi.
org/10.1109/TIE.2014.2334665.
[7] K.R. Godfrey, Perturbation Signals for System Identification, Prentice Hall, UK,
1993.
[8] Y. Han, H. Li, P. Shen, E.A.A. Coelho, J.M. Guerrero, Review of active and reactive
power sharing strategies in hierarchical controlled microgrids, IEEE Trans. Power
Electron. 32 (2017) 2427–2451, https://doi.org/10.1109/TPEL.2016.2569597.
[9] J. He, Y.W. Li, An enhanced microgrid load demand sharing strategy, IEEE Trans.
Power Electron. 27 (2012) 3984–3995, https://doi.org/10.1109/TPEL.2012.
2190099.
[10] Q. Hu, L. Fu, F. Ma, F. Ji, Large signal synchronizing instability of PLL-based VSC
connected to weak AC grid, IEEE Trans. Power Syst. 34 (2019) 3220–3229, https://
doi.org/10.1109/TPWRS.2019.2892224.
[11] IEEE-1547-2018, IEEE Standard for Interconnection and Interoperability of
Distributed Energy Resources with Associated Electric Power Systems Interfaces,
(2018), https://doi.org/10.1109/IEEESTD.2018.8332112.
[12] D.P. Kadam, B.E. Kushare, Reactive power improvement in wind park system using
FACTS, 2013 International Conference on Power, Energy and Control (ICPEC)
(2013) 366–370, https://doi.org/10.1109/ICPEC.2013.6527683.
[13] M. Liserre, R. Teodorescu, F. Blaabjerg, Stability of photovoltaic and wind turbine
grid-connected inverters for a large set of grid impedance values, IEEE Trans. Power
Electron. 21 (2006) 263–272, https://doi.org/10.1109/TPEL.2005.861185.
[14] G. Liu, X. Cao, W. Wang, T. Ma, W. Yang, Y. Chen, Adaptive control strategy to
enhance penetration of PV power generations in weak grid, 2014 International
Power Electronics and Application Conference and Exposition (2014) 1217–1221,
https://doi.org/10.1109/PEAC.2014.7038035.
[15] R. Luhtala, T. Messo, T. Roinila, Adaptive control of grid-voltage feedforward for
grid-connected inverters based on real-time identification of impedance-based sta-
bility margins, IPEC-Niigata 2018 – ECCE ASIA (2018) 1–8.
[16] R. Luhtala, T. Messo, T. Roinila, T. Reinikka, J. Sihvo, M. Vilkko, Adaptive control
of grid-connected inverters based on real-time measurements of grid impedance:
DQ-domain approach, 2017 IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition
(2017) 69–75.
[17] M.A.S. Masoum, A. Jafarian, M. Ladjevardi, E.F. Fuchs, W.M. Grady, Fuzzy ap-
proach for optimal placement and sizing of capacitor banks in the presence of
harmonics, IEEE Trans. Power Del. 19 (2004) 822–829, https://doi.org/10.1109/
TPWRD.2003.823187.
13
Electric Power Systems Research 182 (2020) 106207
Simulation Experimental
4.294 0.0962
134.89 1.2092
0.1679 0.3306
2.4266 10.593
4 kHz 8 kHz
127 127
50 A 0.2 A
2π8 rad/s 2π5 rad/s
2π3.2 rad/s 2π20 rad/s
2π1.6 rad/s 2π20 rad/s
[18] J. McDowell, R. Walling, W. Peter, E. Von Engeln, E. Seymour, R. Nelson, L. Casey,
A. Ellis, C. Barker, Reactive Power Interconnection Requirements for PV and Wind
Plants: Recommendations to NERC, (2019), https://doi.org/10.2172/1039006.
[19] T. Messo, R. Luhtala, T. Roinila, D. Yang, X. Wang, F. Blaabjerg, Real-time im-
pedance-based stability assessment of grid converter interactions, The Eighteenth
IEEE Workshop on Control and Modeling for Power Electronics, IEEE COMPEL 2017
(2017) 1–8.
[20] A. Moawwad, V. Khadkikar, J.L. Kirtley, Photovoltaic power plant as FACTS devices
in multi-feeder systems, IECON 2011 – 37th Annual Conference of the IEEE
Industrial Electronics Society (2011) 918–923, https://doi.org/10.1109/IECON.
2011.6119433.
[21] M. Molinas, D. Moltoni, G. Fascendini, J.A. Suul, R. Faranda, T. Undeland,
Investigation on the role of power electronic controlled constant power loads for
voltage support in distributed AC systems, 2008 IEEE Power Electronics Specialists
Conference (2008) 3597–3602, https://doi.org/10.1109/PESC.2008.4592513.
[22] R. Nivedha, R.N. Banu, A.O. Prakash, Enhancement of grid power transmission
limits using photovoltaic solar farm as STATCOM (PV-STATCOM), 2016
International Conference on Computing Technologies and Intelligent Data
Engineering (ICCTIDE’16) (2016) 1–6, https://doi.org/10.1109/ICCTIDE.2016.
7725325.
[23] V. Patel, J.J. Patel, Power quality improvement of grid using solar photovoltaic
farm, 2017 Innovations in Power and Advanced Computing Technologies (i-PACT)
(2017) 1–6, https://doi.org/10.1109/IPACT.2017.8245113.
[24] S.A. Qureshi, Z. Hameed, Reactive power compensation in solar power plants using
FACTS devices, 2016 Eighteenth International Middle East Power Systems
Conference (2016) 474–479, https://doi.org/10.1109/MEPCON.2016.7836933.
[25] J. Rocabert, A. Luna, F. Blaabjerg, I. Paper, Control of power converters in AC
microgrids.pdf, IEEE Trans. Power Electron. 27 (2012) 4734–4749, https://doi.org/
10.1109/TPEL.2012.2199334.
[26] T. Roinila, T. Messo, E. Santi, MIMO-identification techniques for rapid impedance-
based stability assessment of three-phase systems in DQ domain, IEEE Trans. Power
Electron. 33 (2018) 4015–4022.
[27] T. Roinila, M. Vilkko, J. Sun, Broadband methods for online grid impedance mea-
surement, 2013 IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition (2013)
3003–3010.
[28] T. Roinila, M. Vilkko, J. Sun, Online grid impedance measurement using discrete-
interval binary sequence injection, IEEE J. Emerg. Sel. Topics Power Electron. 2
(2014) 985–993.
[29] S. Sang, N. Gao, X. Cai, R. Li, A novel power-voltage control strategy for the grid-
tied inverter to raise the rated power injection level in a weak grid, IEEE J. Emerg.
Sel. Topics Power Electron. 6 (2018) 219–232, https://doi.org/10.1109/JESTPE.
2017.2715721.
[30] A. Spring, G. Wirth, G. Becker, R. Pardatscher, R. Witzmann, Grid influences from
reactive power flow of photovoltaic inverters with a power factor specification of
one, IEEE Trans. Smart Grid 7 (2016) 1222–1229, https://doi.org/10.1109/TSG.
2015.2413949.
[31] J.A. Suul, M. Molinas, Properties of reactive current injection by AC power elec-
tronic systems for loss minimization, 2012 15th International Power Electronics and
Motion Control Conference (EPE/PEMC) (2012) 1–8, https://doi.org/10.1109/
EPEPEMC.2012.6397415.
[32] D. Torres Lobera, A. Mäki, J. Huusari, K. Lappalainen, T. Suntio, S. Valkealahti,
Operation of TUT solar PV power station research plant under partial shading
caused by snow and buildings, Int. J. Photoenergy (2013), https://doi.org/10.
1155/2013/837310.
[33] K. Turitsyn, P. Sulc, S. Backhaus, M. Chertkov, Options for control of reactive power
by distributed photovoltaic generators, Proc. IEEE 99 (2011) 1063–1073, https://
doi.org/10.1109/JPROC.2011.2116750.
[34] R.K. Varma, B. Das, I. Axente, T. Vanderheide, Optimal 24-hr utilization of a PV
solar system as STATCOM (PV-STATCOM) in a distribution network, 2011 IEEE
H. Alenius, et al. Electric Power Systems Research 182 (2020) 106207

Power and Energy Society General Meeting (2011) 1–8, https://doi.org/10.1109/ Roni Luhtala received his M.Sc. degree in electrical en-
PES.2011.6039864. gineering from Tampere University of Technology (TUT),
[35] R.K. Varma, E.M. Siavashi, B. Das, V. Sharma, Real-time digital simulation of a PV Tampere, Finland, in 2017. Since then, he has worked as a
solar system as STATCOM (PV-STATCOM) for voltage regulation and power factor doctoral student with the Faculty of Engineering and
correction, 2012 IEEE Electrical Power and Energy Conference (2012) 157–163, Natural Sciences, Tampere University. His main research
https://doi.org/10.1109/EPEC.2012.6474942. interests include real-time identifications and adaptive
[36] P. Wang, W. Qin, X. Han, Y. Ding, X. Du, Reactive power aspects in reliability control of grid-connected converters.
assessment of power systems, IEEE Trans. Power Syst. 26 (2011) 85–92, https://doi.
org/10.1109/TPWRS.2010.2050788.
[37] X. Wang, D. Yang, F. Blaabjerg, Harmonic current control for LCL-filtered VSCs
connected to ultra-weak grids, 2017 IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and
Exposition (ECCE) (2017) 1608–1614, https://doi.org/10.1109/ECCE.2017.
8095984.
[38] G. Yan, Y. Cai, Q. Jia, Y. Li, S. Liang, Stability analysis and operation control of
photovoltaic generation system connected to weak grid, 2017 IEEE Conference on
Tuomas Messo received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering
Energy Internet and Energy System Integration (EI2) (2017) 1–6, https://doi.org/
from the Tampere University of Technology, Tampere,
10.1109/EI2.2017.8245435.
Finland, in 2014. He is currently with GE Grid Solutions
[39] D. Yang, X. Wang, F. Liu, K. Xin, Y. Liu, F. Blaabjerg, Adaptive reactive power
and holds the position of Adjunct Professor at the Tampere
control of PV power plants for improved power transfer capability under ultra-weak
University in the field of power electronics, where he also
grid conditions, IEEE Trans. Smart Grid 10 (2019) 1269–1279, https://doi.org/10.
worked as an Assistant Professor between 2016 and 2019.
1109/TSG.2017.2762332.
His research interests include grid-connected three-phase
[40] P.R. Yelpale, H.T. Jadhav, C. Chormale, New control strategy for grid integrated PV
power converters for renewable energy applications and
solar farm to operate as STATCOM, 2017 International Conference on Circuit,Power
microgrids, dynamic modeling, control design, impedance-
and Computing Technologies (ICCPCT) (2017) 1–6, https://doi.org/10.1109/
based interactions in three-phase systems and impedance
ICCPCT.2017.8074263.
design of grid-connected inverters.
[41] G. Yordanov, O. Midtgard, T. Saetre, H. Nielsen, L. Norum, Over-irradiance (cloud
enhancement) event at high latitudes, IEEE J. Photovolt. 3 (2012) 271–277.
[42] X. Zhao, L. Chang, R. Shao, K. Spence, Power system support functions provided by
smart inverters – a review, CPSS Trans. Power Electron. Appl. 3 (2018) 25–35.
Tomi Roinila received the M.Sc. (Tech.) and Dr.Tech. de-
grees in automation and control engineering from Tampere
Henrik Alenius received the M.Sc. degree in electrical University of Technology (TUT), in Finland, in 2006 and
engineering from Tampere University of Technology, 2010, respectively. He is currently an Academy Research
Tampere, Finland, in 2018. Since then, he has worked as a Fellow at TUT. His main research interests include mod-
doctoral student with the Faculty of Information eling and control of grid-connected power-electronics sys-
Technology and Communication Sciences at Tampere tems, and modeling of multiconverter systems.
University. His research interests include impedance-based
interactions in grid-connected systems and stability analysis
of multi-parallel inverters.

14