Broadband Methods for Online Grid Impedance

Measurement
Tomi Roinila
Department of Electrical, Computer
and Systems Engineering
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Troy, NY, USA
Email: tomi.roinila@tut.fi
Matti Vilkko
Department of Automation
Science and Engineering
Tampere University of Technology
Tampere, Finland
Email: matti.vilkko@tut.fi
Jian Sun
Department of Electrical, Computer
and Systems Engineering
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Troy, NY, USA
Email: jsun@ecse.rpi.edu

Abstract—Grid impedance is an important parameter for
the operation and control of grid-connected inverters used for
the integration of solar, wind, and other distributed generation
resources. Since the grid impedance usually varies over time
and with grid operation conditions, online measurement is
required for adaptive control of grid-connected inverters. Existing
online measurement methods based on impulse perturbation and
Fourier analysis require large current or voltage injection that
may interfere with normal operation of the inverter. This paper
proposes the use of maximum-length binary sequence (MLBS)
injection and averaging Fourier techniques to overcome the
drawbacks of impulse injection. Experimental results based on
a three-phase grid-connected inverter are presented and used to
demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods.
I. I NTRODUCTION
The increased use of inverter-connected resources starts to
affect the dynamics of the power grid. Interactions between the
inverters and the power grid have been a topic of extensive re-
search in recent years [1]–[3]. One issue that has been studied
is the harmonic resonance between the inverter and the grid.
The harmonic resonance may appear to be a power quality
problem, but it is actually an indication of lack of system
stability margin and may lead to instability and disruption of
inverter operation if the grid impedance or the inverter power
level further increases [4]. Therefore, accurate grid impedance
information is essential for the design and tuning of control
for grid-connected inverters. Since the grid impedance varies
over time and with many parameters, real-time measurement
is most desirable.
The identification of grid impedance has a long history
[5]–[12]. The presented techniques can be categorized into
passive methods [5], active methods [6]–[11], and quasi-
passive methods [12]. The passive methods use the non-
characteristic voltage and current harmonics that are already
present in the system. Active methods apply an excitation
signal that is used to perturb the current and voltage waveforms
followed by appropriate data acquisition and signal processing.
Quasi-passive methods use hybrid identification techniques.
Passive and quasi-passive methods have been proved to be
ineffective if power system disturbances are not strong enough
and, consequently, active methods have become more popular
[13].
The active methods can be further categorized into steady-
state methods and transient methods. In the steady-state meth-
ods, a periodic excitation such as sinusoid is injected. The
analysis is then performed at steady state by Fourier analysis.
A frequency-response analyzer based on sine sweeps was
applied in [6] to measure the grid impedance of a single-
phase system. Similar approach to three-phase systems was
presented in [7]. An instrumentation for high-frequency grid-
impedance measurements was presented in [8], and a dq-
domain approach in [9]. Using sine sweeps provides highest
possible signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and, hence, most reliable
and accurate estimate of grid impedance. However, the method
is not suitable for online applications due to measurement
time.
The steady-state methods based on a broadband excitations
such as random sequences or pseudo-random sequences have
also been reported. Random pulse-width modulation signals
were applied in [10] as grid excitation to obtain the impedance
over a wide spectral range. The method was however affected
by the characteristics of aperiodic excitation such as leakage
and uncontrollable spectral energy distribution. The pseudo-
random binary sequence (PRBS) was applied, and the output
impedance of a single-phase grid-connected inverter was mea-
sured in [14], [15].
In the transient method, an impulse current is typically
injected into the network, and Fourier analysis is applied to
extract the corresponding frequency components in both the
injected current and the resulting grid voltage response. The
impulse introduces a wide spectrum and hence, the obtained
results show the grid impedance over a wide bandwidth.
Adaptive control of grid-connected inverters based on online
measurement of the grid impedance using an impulse injection
was presented in [11]. In the method, the grid impedance was
measured by the inverter itself: the inverter injects an impulse
current on top of the normal output current, measures the
resulting responses in the grid voltage, and applies Fourier
analysis to extract the corresponding frequency components
in both the voltage and current. The grid impedance is then
determined by the ratio between the perturbation voltage and
current. This method is easy to implement and works well for
weak grids. However, its accuracy is limited by the spectral

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energy distribution of the impulse signal, which is largely their popularity is that they can be generated using feedback
uncontrollable. The large injection required when the grid shift register circuits, as shown in Fig.1.
impedance is low may also interfere with normal operation of
the inverter. Additionally, injection of a large impulse current
has to be carefully placed within a fundamental cycle, such
XOR
x ci
cm
that spectral averaging techniques cannot be easily applied to MLBS
1 2 ... ... i ... n
reduce measurement noises.
In this paper, the use of a maximum-length binary sequence SHIFT REGISTER

(MLBS) injection in place of the conventional impulse injec- Fig. 1: n-bit shift register with XOR feedback for MLBS generation.
tion for online grid impedance measurement is proposed. The
MLBS is one class of pseudo-random sequences [16]. The Table I shows an example of an output from a shift register
sequence is a deterministic and periodic signal, and has the circuit for generating an MLBS of a length 24 − 1 = 15. The
lowest possible peak factor. Multiple injection periods can feedback is generated from stages 1 and 4. All four columns
be applied through spectral averaging, and as a result, the in Table I produces the same MLBS. The register can be
amplitude of the excitation can be kept at a much lower level started with any number other than 0,0,0,0. In the example,
compared to an impulse-type excitation. Other advantages the register is started from 0,0,0,1. Each binary number from
of the MLBS method include straightforward generation and 0,0,0,1 to 1,1,1,1 appears exactly once (the sequence starts
design of the sequence. The use of the MLBS has become repeating after 15 cycles). This is a general result for all
popular in various fields of electronics during the recent years maximum-length binary sequences [16]. In practice, the values
such as in analysis of switched-mode power supplies [17]– 0 and 1 are mapped to -1 and +1 to produce a symmetrical
[19], measuring impedance spectroscopy of single living cells MLBS with an average close to zero.
[20], in analysis of piezoelectric sensors [21], and in analysis
of silicon nanowire-based field-effect transistors [22]. TABLE I: Maximum-length binary sequence from a four-stage shift register.
It will be shown that both the impulse and MLBS injec-
Shift Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3 Stage 4
tions work well for grid-impedance measurements under grid
1 0 0 0 1
conditions where tight amplitude restrictions are not required 2 1 0 0 0
and when the SNR of the measured signals is relatively 3 1 1 0 0
high. However, under stronger grid conditions and tighter 4 1 1 1 0
5 1 1 1 1
amplitude restrictions the impulse method fails while the 6 0 1 1 1
MLBS perturbation still produces accurate estimate of the grid 7 1 0 1 1
impedance. 8 0 1 0 1
9 1 0 1 0
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section II 10 1 1 0 1
reviews the theory behind the MLBS and synthesis of the 11 0 1 1 0
12 0 0 1 1
sequence. Section III gives the design guidelines of the MLBS 13 1 0 0 1
and computation algorithm to obtain the grid impedance from 14 0 1 0 0
three-phase system. Section IV presents experimental evidence 15 0 0 1 0
based on a three-phase grid-connected inverter and a grid. 16 0 0 0 1
Finally, Section V draws conclusions.

II. M AXIMUM -L ENGTH B INARY S EQUENCE
Pseudo-random binary sequence (PRBS) is a periodic
broadband signal with the following properties:
1) The signal has two levels, and it can switch the level
only at certain event points t = 0, Δt, 2Δt, ...
2) The change of signal level is predetermined, so that the
PRBS is deterministic and experiments are repeatable.
3) The sequence is periodic with period T = N Δt, where
N is an odd integer
4) Within one period, there are (N + 1)/2 intervals when
the signal is at one level and (N − 1)/2 intervals when
it is at the other.
A PRBS is based on a sequence of length N . The most com-
monly used signals are based on maximum-length sequences
(maximum-length binary sequence(MLBS)). Such sequences
exist for N = 2n − 1, where n is an integer. The reason for
Fig. 2 shows the form of the power spectrum of the MLBS
shown in Table I. The sequence is generated at 10 kHz and has
signal levels ± 1 V. The power spectrum has an envelope and
drops to zero at the generation frequency and its harmonics.
The spectrum is given by
a2 (N + 1) sin2 (πq/N )
ΦMLBS (q) = , q = ±1, ±2, . . . (1)
N2 (πq/N )2
where q denotes the sequence number of the spectral line, a
is the signal amplitude, and N is the signal length.
The MLBS x has the lowest possible peak factor
|x|peak /xrms = 1 regardless of its length. Hence, the sequence
is well suited for sensitive systems which require small-
amplitude perturbation. Due to the deterministic nature of the
sequence, the signal can be repeated and injected precisely
and the SNR can be increased by synchronous averaging of
the response periods.

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Fig. 2: Power spectrum of 15-bit-length MLBS generated at 10 kHz.
III. G RID -I MPEDANCE M EASUREMENT U SING MLBS:
M ETHODS AND D ESIGN
Consider a grid-connected system as a linear time-invariant
system for small disturbances. According to basic control
theory, this type of system can be fully characterized by its
impulse response, which can be transformed into frequency
domain and presented by a frequency-response function.
EXCITATION x(t ) RESPONSE
SIGNAL
GENERATOR
g (t )
e(t ) + +
xe (t ) yr (t )
Fig. 3: Typical measurement set up.
Fig.3 shows a typical setup where the device under test,
presented by an impulse-response function g(t), is to be
identified. The system is perturbed by the excitation x(t),
which yields the corresponding output response y(t). The
measured signals are corrupted with noise, as presented by
e(t) and r(t). The measured excitation and output response can
now be denoted by xe (t) and yr (t). The noises are assumed to
resemble white noise and are uncorrelated with x(t) and y(t).
All of the signals are assumed to be zero mean sequences. The
frequency-response function of the device can be denoted as
Y (jω)
G(jω) =
X(jω)
where Y (jω) and X(jω) denote the Fourier transforms of
the corresponding time-domain signals y(t) and x(t). In
the presence of external noise the noise-affected frequency-
response function Gn (jω) can be denoted as
Yr (jω)
Gn (jω) =
Xe (jω)
where Xe (jω) and Yr (jω) denote the Fourier transforms of
xe (t) and yr (t). Denoting the error signals e(t) and r(t) by
their Fourier transforms E(jω) and R(jω), Gn (jω) becomes
1 + [R(jω)/Y (jω)]
Gn (jω) = G(jω)
1 + [E(jω)/X(jω)]
Clearly, in the presence of noise at the input and output
signals, the measured transfer function obtained by (4) may
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significantly differ from the real frequency-response function
G(jω). To avoid the problem, the cross-correlation technique
has been often applied [17]. In this method, a cross-correlation
is computed between the perturbation and sensed output after
which the frequency response is obtained by Fourier transform.
The method tends to cancel out the effect of external noise in
output provided that the excitation resembles ideal white noise.
The method requires, however, that the measured perturbation
is noise free. Considering a system shown in Fig.3, the ideal
perturbation is not measured and used in the computation.
Hence the cross-correlation technique fails and both random
and bias error will be present. Even in the case of ideal
perturbation, the cross-correlation technique reduces the effect
of noise only from the output side. In the presence of noise
both at input and output, the logarithmic averaging procedure
[23] is proposed as
 P 1/P
 Urk (jω)
Glog (jω) = (5)
Iek (jω)
k=1
where P denotes the number of injected excitation periods.
In the method, the measurements from both input and output
sides are segmented and Fourier transformed after which (5) is
y (t )
applied. As the conventional cross-correlation method requires
r (t ) that the excitation resembles ideal white noise (or more specif-
ically, the auto correlation of the excitation resembles Dirac
delta function), the logarithmic averaging procedure does not
have this requirement. The method tends to cancel out the
effect of uncorrelated noise both from input and output sides,
and hence, the frequency response is obtained more accurately
[23].
A. Excitation Design
In a typical frequency-response identification, the applied
excitation signal should have an approximately equal amount
of energy at the frequencies where the system is to be
identified. According to Fig.2, the energy in the MLBS is
clearly spread over the harmonics in a non-uniformly manner.
However, approximately uniform energy can be achieved by
generating the sequence with a sufficiently high frequency.
(2)
Typically, the spectrum is considered to be flat until the power
has dropped 3 dB. This part of the excitation signal is known as
an effective frequency band. Thus, the generation frequency of
the signal has to be selected such that the effective frequency
band covers the frequency band where the system is to be
identified. Other design variables of the MLBS include the
length of one MLBS period (N ), number of injection periods
(3)
(P ), and amplitude of the injection (a).
The period length N should be selected such that
N = 2n − 1 ≥ fgn · T , where n denotes the degree of
the MLBS shift register, T denotes the settling time of the
system, and fgn is the generation frequency of the sequence.
(4) This is important in order to avoid time aliasing [23]. The
number of excitation periods P can be decided by evaluating
the power of external noise which defines the variance of the
frequency-response function. Using P excitation periods the
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 √
effect of noise is reduced by 1/ P . The amplitude a of the
excitation needs to be chosen carefully. It has to be low enough
to avoid too great effects of nonlinear dynamical phenomena
but high enough to provide adequate SNR. The nonlinearities
and noise characteristics depend both on the device under test
and specified operational conditions. Thus, it is difficult to give
general advice for the selection of the amplitude.
Considering grid-impedance measurements, the starting
point of the excitation design is the selection of the generation
frequency fgn . If the actual injection is performed through the
controller, the measurable frequency response is limited by
the controller bandwidth and the generation frequency should
be selected accordingly. Higher generation frequency (and
hence increased bandwidth of the measured impedance) may
be obtained by considering different injection point of the
excitation; depending on the injection point, the bandwidth
may be limited by the switching frequency or the sampling
frequency.
Next, the period length N should be selected. The settling
time of the grid voltages/currents for small disturbances is a
fraction of fundamental cycle. Since the length of a reasonable
excitation in practical measurements is typically close to the
fundamental cycle, the time aliasing will not be an issue. In-
stead, the period length should be based on desired frequency
resolution that is defined by fgn /N .
The number of excitation periods P should be defined
by the desired accuracy (variance) of the measurements and
memory limitations of data acquisition. The measurement can
be performed first by applying only one excitation period
after which the SNR
√ is computed. Because the effect of noise
is reduced by 1/ P , P can be increased according to the
requirements and limitations. In practical measurements, P
typically varies between 2−8.
B. Decomposition into Sequence Components
The measured frequency components of voltages and cur-
rents are typically decomposed into positive- and negative-
sequence components [11]. The zero sequence component is
not computed assuming that the zero sequence impedance of
the three-phase inverter is infinite, which is justified by the
fact that there are only three wires at the grid interconnection
and no zero sequence current can flow. The decomposition
operation of voltages and currents can be given as
⎡ ⎤
    X (jω)
X1 (jω) 1 1 a a2 ⎣ a
= Xb (jω) ⎦ (6)
X2 (jω) 3 1 a2 a
Xc (jω)
where X1 and X2 denote the discrete Fourier transform of
the negative and positive sequence components, a is defined
as e(j2π/3) , and Xa , Xb , and Xc are the Fourier transforms
of the measured line voltages or currents. The impedance is
computed by dividing the sequence components of voltages
and currents. It is assumed that there is no coupling of
sequence components.
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IV. E XPERIMENTS AND P ERFORMANCE E VALUATION
Fig. 4 shows the setup of the system under study. The
semiconductor block on the left represents a three-phase
voltage-source converter fed from a renewable source which
is modeled as a dc voltage source in this study. A second-
order LC filter (L-Cf ) is inserted between the inverter and the
grid to attenuate the pulse-width-modulation (PWM) ripple
and a damping resistor (Rd ) is placed in series with each
filter capacitor. Inductors Lg represent the grid impedance. A
second inverter is connected in parallel with the grid to emulate
the situation such as wind farms where the grid impedance
seen by each turbine also includes the impedance of other
turbines.
The grid synchronization is implemented in a digital signal
process (DSP). The main control functional blocks are de-
picted in Fig. 4, and include synchronization to the grid voltage
by a phase-locked loop (PLL), transformation of measured
voltages and currents into the dq reference frame, and phase-
domain control. As shown in the figure, the current perturba-
tion, whether in the impulse or MLBS form, is injected into
the d-axis component of the grid current reference (idref ). Since
the grid voltages are measured between the filter inductors
and capacitors, the measured grid impedance (Zg ) actually
includes the impedance of the filter capacitors and the damping
resistors in series with them (see Fig. 4). The line-to-line
voltage is 208 V and the three-phase power 5 kW.
Two sets of experiments are performed with both the
impulse injection and MLBS perturbation. The first set is
performed with a grid of 0.1 per unit impedance, and the
second under stronger grid conditions (0.03 per unit). A sine-
sweep-based network analyzer is used to obtain a reference
response and compare the results. The grid impedance is
measured for 3 kHz bandwidth. All signals are measured at
100 kHz.
A. Experiment 1
In the first experiment, the amplitude of the MLBS current
was restricted to 0.1 per unit (10 % of the rated inverter cur-
rent), i.e. 2 A. For the impulse current injection, the amplitude
was set at 0.6 per unit (12 A) to achieve approximately similar
accuracy. The MLBS was designed and generated by Matlab
by following the design steps in Section III, and injected to the
current controller reference. The MLBS was generated using
a 10-bit-length shift register. Hence, the length of one full
excitation period was 1023 bits. Fig.5 shows a sample MLBS
injection signal and the impulse current injection used in the
experiment.
The MLBS was injected into the system with 5 periods. The
measured data sequences were Fourier transformed after which
(5) was applied. Fig.6 shows a sample of collected voltages
and currents during the MLBS injection (at 32 ms).
The impulse was injected in the negative direction at the
positive peak of the phase current such that the net inverter
current stays within its rated value. The impulse analysis used
in the paper assumes the system is stationary between two
consecutive fundamental cycles. The effects of background
 Fig. 4: Schematic diagram of the grid-connected inverter used for injection of impulse/MLBS and grid-impedance identification.

harmonics are removed by subtracting the unperturbed system

trajectory from the impulse response of the system. This oper-
ation is applied to each phase voltage and phase current. Fig.7
shows a sample of collected voltages and currents during the
impulse injection (at 23 ms). Since the impulse response has
only one period of response, straightforward Fourier transform
was applied to obtain the spectral representation.

Fig. 5: Impulse current excitation and sample MLBS current injection.

40
Current a Current b Current c
30
40
Current a Current b Current c 20
30
Current (A)

10
20
0
Current (A)

10
−10
0
−20
−10
−30
−20
−40
−30 15 20 25 30
Time(ms)
−40
10 20 30 40 50 60
Time(ms)

300 Voltage a Voltage b Voltage c

300
200
Voltage a Voltage b Voltage c
200 100
Voltage (V)

100 0
Voltage (V)

0 −100

−200
−100
−300
−200
15 20 25 30
Time(ms)
−300
10 20 30 40 50 60 Fig. 7: Measured current and voltage responses during the injection of
Time(ms)
impulse.
Fig. 6: Sample of current and voltage responses during the injection of MLBS.

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 The SNR of the measured voltage responses was approx- In the experiment, both the impulse and MLBS injections were
imately 36 dB for the impulse and 31 dB for the MLBS applied with 5 periods and averaging was used. Otherwise the
(single period).√For five periods of MLBS the effect of noise is experiment was performed identically to the first experiment.
reduced by 1/ 5 and consequently, the SNR is increased to Fig.9 shows a sample of collected voltages and currents
10 dB higher than with the impulse injection. Fig.8 shows during the impulse injection (at 12 ms). Fig.10 shows a sample
the computed magnitude and phase response of the grid of collected voltages and currents during the MLBS injection
impedance. Only the positive sequence components are shown. (at 28 ms).
The negative sequence components show almost identical be-
havior. As can be seen, both methods yield relatively accurate
40
estimate of the grid impedance at lower frequencies showing Current a Current b Current c
30
only few Decibels and degrees of error up to the resonance
frequency. Due to the noise-reducing averaging procedure (5) 20

and hence increased SNR, the MLBS injection produces more

Current (A)
10
accurate estimates at higher frequencies of the grid impedance 0
where the effect of noise is stronger. The curves obtained by
−10
the impulse injection show up to four Decibels and 20 degrees
−20
of error at higher frequencies.
−30

−40
45 5 10 15 20
Impulse Positive sequence components Time(ms)
40
MLBS
35 Reference
Magnitude(dB)

30
300 Voltage a Voltage b Voltage c
25
200
20

15 100
Voltage (V)

10 0
5
2 3
−100
10 10
−200

−300
150
5 10 15 20
Time(ms)
100
Fig. 9: Measured current and voltage responses during the injection of
50 impulse.
Phase(deg)

0 The measured SNR for the voltage responses (single period)

−50
−100
−150
10
2 3
10
Frequency (Hz)
Fig. 8: Positive sequence components of grid impedance with impulse and
MLBS.
B. Experiment 2
The second set of experiments was performed under
stronger grid conditions (0.03 per unit). In the experiment, the
amplitudes of both excitations were restricted to 0.1 per unit.
Due to the stronger grid conditions, the SNR of the measured
voltage responses is weakened. The MLBS was redesigned
and shortened to 511 bits in order to produce more energy
at the harmonic frequencies. Using an MLBS of half length
compared to the sequence in the first experiment effectively
means that the energy is doubled at the harmonic frequencies.
was approximately 27 dB for the MLBS but only 2 dB for the
impulse. With the applied five periods the SNR values were
increased to 40 dB for the MLBS and 15 dB for the impulse.
In order to have equal SNR values the number of impulse
periods should have been increased to approximately 90.
Fig.11 shows the computed magnitude and phase response
of the grid impedance with the impulse and MLBS. Due to the
lower SNR of the impulse, the obtained curves show high error
(up to 15 dB and 60 degrees) through the whole frequency
band compared to the reference. The curves obtained by the
MLBS follow more accurately the reference showing only a
fraction of error compared to the response obtained by the
impulse.
In order to obtain similar accuracy with the impulse, the
level of injection should be increased to approximately 1.5 per
unit (without increasing the number of periods). Fig.12 shows
the time domain curves with such injection. Fig.13 shows
the computed magnitude and phase response. The impulse
with increased level of injection produces relatively accurate

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 40 response at lower and higher frequencies. The impedance
Current a Current b Current c around the resonance frequency is however poorly obtained.
30

20
40
Current (A)

10
Current a Current b Current c
0 30

−10 20

Current (A)
−20 10

−30 0

−40 −10
10 20 30 40 50 60
Time(ms) −20

−30

300 −40
10 15 20 25
Voltage a Voltage b Voltage c Time(ms)
200

100
Voltage (V)

300 Voltage a Voltage b Voltage c

0
200
−100
100
Voltage (V)

−200
0

−300 −100
10 20 30 40 50 60
Time(ms)
−200
Fig. 10: Sample of current and voltage responses during the injection of
MLBS. −300
10 15 20 25
Time(ms)

Fig. 12: Measured current and voltage responses during the injection of
45 impulse.
40 Impulse Positive sequence components
MLBS
35 Reference As the grid conditions become stronger, the measurement
30 will be more challenging due to the reduced voltage response
Magnitude(dB)

25 to the current perturbation. Since the energy of the MLBS

20 is distributed over many harmonic frequencies, either the
15
amplitude of the current injection has to be increased to
10
produce more perturbation in the voltage, or more periods of
5
injection have to be applied and averaged to reduce the effects
0
−5
of noise. Both methods may become difficult in practice.
10
2
10
3
In such cases, the discrete-interval binary sequence (DIBS)
injection can be used in place of the MLBS. The DIBS is a
computer optimized signal where certain number of harmonic
150 frequencies are specified from a binary sequence, and their
energy is maximized at the cost of non specified harmonic
100
frequencies (without increasing the signal time-domain ampli-
50 tude). The DIBS was applied for three-phase grid impedance
Phase(deg)

measurement in [24].
0
V. C ONCLUSIONS
−50
Recent studies have presented an impulse-type excitation
−100 implemented by a grid-connected inverter to obtain grid
−150
impedance online. The method has advantages, but it requires
2 3
10 10 low noise floor. This paper has presented the use of the
Frequency (Hz)
maximum-length binary sequence (MLBS). Due to the low
Fig. 11: Positive sequence components of grid impedance with impulse and
MLBS.
peak factor, the amplitude of the injection can be kept rela-
tively small compared to other types of excitations thus guar-

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for measuring impedance characteristics of three-phase ac power sys-
50
tems,” IEEE Trans. on Power Electronics, vol. 24, pp. 1802–1810, 2009.
Phase(deg)

[10] M. Jordan, H. Langkowski, D. Trung, and D. Schulz, “Frequency

0 dependent grid-impedance determination with pulse-width-modulation-
−50
−100
−150
2 3
10 10
Frequency (Hz)
Fig. 13: Positive sequence components of grid impedance with Impulse and
MLBS.
anteeing normal system operation during the identification.
Other advantages include cost effective and straightforward
generation of the sequence and easy data acquisition. It was
shown that under low SNR and tight amplitude restrictions of
the injections, the impulse-method does not work well while
the impedance is still measurable with the MLBS. Experimen-
tal results based on three-phase grid-connected inverter and
grid have been presented and used to compare the methods.
The future work will include measuring grid impedance
under both balanced and unbalanced load conditions, study-
ing methods to further reducing the amplitude of excitation,
and investigating the potentiality of other pseudo-random
excitations such as inverse-repeat sequences and orthogonal
sequences.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work is supported in part by the Academy of Finland
and by the National Science Foundation of US under Award
#ECCS-1002265. The experimental work was conducted at
the RPI Distributed Generation Test-Bed and was supported
by Mauricio Cespedes.
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