Voltage Support Control Strategies for Static Synchronous Compensators Under Unbalanced Voltage Sags

Static synchronous compensators have been broadly employed for the provision of electrical ac network services, which include voltage regulation, network balance, and stability improvement. Several studies of such compensators have also been conducted to improve the ac network operation during unbalanced voltage sags. This paper presents a complete control scheme intended for synchronous compensators operating under these abnormal network conditions. In particular, this control scheme introduces two contributions: a novel reactive current reference generator and a new voltage support control loop. The current reference generator has as a main feature the capacity to supply the required reactive current even when the voltage drops in amplitude during the voltage sag. Thus, a safe system operation is easily guaranteed by fixing the limit required current to the maximum rated current. The voltage control loop is able to implement several control strategies by setting two voltage set points. In this paper, three voltage support control strategies are proposed, and their advantages and limitations are discussed in detail. The two theoretical contributions of this paper have been validated by experimental results. Certainly, the topic of voltage support is open for further research, and the control scheme proposed in this paper can be viewed as an interesting configuration to devise other control strategies in future works.