An Automatable Approach for Small-Signal Stability Analysis of Power Electronic-Based Power Systems Using EMT Companion Circuits

The increasing presence of power electronic (PE) controlled devices in power systems has widened the bandwidth of transients to be studied for grid stability. While these transients are normally studied using time-domain simulation (TDS), wide bandwidth linear time-invariant (LTI) state-space models are a useful complement to TDS for diagnostics, controller design and parametric analysis. A general automatable method to compute an LTI sampled-data model of a PE-based circuit is presented in this paper. The proposed method is based on the techniques employed in electro-magnetic-transient (EMT) programs to perform TDS of PE-based circuits. The method uses the building blocks of EMT nodal formulation such as conductance matrix of companion circuit and its LU factors computed during TDS, interpolation and chatter elimination corrections, and EMT model of the firing angle control system. The method yields a small-signal LTI sampled-data model which is amenable to eigenanalysis and is illustrated using simple PE-based circuits such as a buck converter and a grid-connected STATCOM with closed-loop control.