Fractional-Order Sliding-Mode Control of Islanded Distributed Energy Resource Systems

This paper proposes a voltage control strategy for islanded operation of dispatchable electronically coupled distributed energy resource (DER) systems, for remote (off grid) electrification systems. The proposed control strategy is based on fractional-order sliding-mode control, offers black-start functionality, maintains the quality of the output voltage of the host DER system in spite of unbalanced and/or distorted load currents, and ensures protection of the power-electronic interface to external faults. Moreover, the fractional derivative order of the controller can be used as an additional tuning parameter. Performance of the proposed control strategy is demonstrated through time-domain simulation of single- and multi-DER islanded networks, starting from black-start and subjected to various operating scenario, and it is also compared to the performance of a proportional-integral (PI)-based control strategy.