A Detailed Assessment of the Power Quality Improvement of an Islanded AC Microgrid through Upgrading Conventional Grid-Feeding Current-Controlled Converters to Operate as Multifunctional Converters

The decarbonization of the global economy is one of society’s urgent objectives nowadays. Thus, the large-scale adoption of renewable energy sources, like solar and wind energy, seems to be the best pathway to achieving sustainable development. Thus, the microgrid concept has emerged as a solution to address concerns related to the intermittent nature and lack of inertia for such sources. Several studies involving microgrids have been published in the last few years. However, in most of them, power quality (PQ) disturbances and strategies to manage such disturbances are not considered, especially in the islanded operation mode. Hence, in this paper, a detailed assessment of the PQ of an islanded AC microgrid is conducted, considering the coexistence of a nonlinear load, voltage-controlled converters, and a current-controlled converter (CCC). The analyses consider two scenarios, depending on the operation mode of the CCC: (1) the CCC operating as a conventional grid-feeding converter and (2) considering a cost-effective upgrading of the conventional CCC to operate as a multifunctional converter. An experimental test bed is built to validate both scenarios. The presented results provide strong evidence that the AFF significantly improves the microgrid PQ and its suitability for dealing with PQ disturbances in real-world applications.