702

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, VOL. 51, NO. 1, JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015

Large-Signal Stabilization of AC Grid Supplying

Voltage-Source Converters With LCL-Filters
Azeddine Houari, Hugues Renaudineau, Jean-Philippe Martin, Babak Nahid-Mobarakeh, Senior Member, IEEE,
Serge Pierfederici, and Farid Meibody-Tabar

AbstractA robust tool compensating stability problems occurring in interconnected voltage-source rectifier loads with input
passive LCL filter is developed. An LCL filter can reduce the
harmonics introduced by PWM switching frequency and guarantee low currents THD using small component values comparing
to the well-known L filter solution. Nevertheless, the additional
poles introduced by the LC part induce resonance in the system
and may lead to instability. To deal with this issue, a large-signal
stabilizing supervisor based on the direct Lyapunov theorem is
proposed in this contribution. The use of Lyapunov theory allows
constructing feedback stabilizing signals which keep both the
damping performance and robustness of the proposed stabilizer.
The stability phenomenon is highlighted and the effectiveness of
the proposed solution is validated by experimental results.
Index TermsLarge-signal stability, LCL filter, power system
stabilization, voltage-source converter (VSC).

N OMENCLATURE
iLd , iLq
u
PL , Q L
PL_stab
QL_stab
ed , eq

dq-currents at the input of the voltage source converter (VSC).

Input vector of the stabilized system.
Active and reactive powers at the input of the VSC.
Stabilizing active power.
Stabilizing reactive power.
dq-voltages at the point of common connection
(PCC).
dc-link voltage of the VSC.
dq-control voltages of the VSC.
dq-voltages at the LCL filter capacitor.
dq-currents at the input of the LCL filter.
Large-signal deviation from the operating point.

Vdc
Vd , Vq
vcd , vcq
id , i q
x
Subscripts
d, q
Synchronous frame components.
0
Operating (equilibrium) point.
ref
Reference.

Manuscript received March 30, 2013; revised October 12, 2013, January 25,
2014, and April 1, 2014; accepted May 12, 2014. Date of publication June 4,
2014; date of current version January 16, 2015. Paper 2013-IACC-155.R3, presented at the 2012 IEEE Industry Applications Society Annual Meeting, Las
Vegas, NV, USA, October 711, and approved for publication in the IEEE
T RANSACTIONS ON I NDUSTRY A PPLICATIONS by the Industrial Automation
and Control Committee of the IEEE Industry Applications Society.
The authors are with the Ecole Normale Suprieure dElectricit et de Mcanique (ENSEM), Groupe de Recherche en Electrotechnique et Electronique
de Nancy (GREEN), Universit de Lorraine, 54518 Vandoeuvre les Nancy,
France (e-mail: azeddine.houari@ensem.inpl-nancy.fr; azeddine.houari@univlorraine.fr; hugues.renaudineau@univ-lorraine.fr; Jean-Philippe.Martin@
ensem.inpl-nancy.fr;
babak.nahidmobarakeh@univ-lorraine.fr;
serge.
pierfederici@univ-lorraine.fr; meibody74@ensem.inpl-nancy.fr).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TIA.2014.2328789

I. I NTRODUCTION

HE increase of renewable energy on one hand and the

increase of interconnectivity in the grid on the other hand
put emphasis on the significance of stability issues. In addition,
the use of PWM controlled voltage source rectifiers as front end
raises in grid-connected ac power systems making the stability
more critical. Indeed, it is known that the interconnection of
passive filters decreases the stability margins of power systems
[1]. However, it is still required to improve the power quality.
In this aim, LCL filters are the most common solution, mainly
because they reduce harmonic current distortions with small
component values compared to the well-known L filter solution
[1][3]. However, the pole and zero introduced by the LC
part cause an inherent high-resonant peak at the resonance
frequency. The stability problem results from uncontrolled oscillations at resonance frequency. The resonance phenomenon
degrades the power quality and risks to damage the hardware.
This resonance can be excited either by increasing the power
demand or by increasing the controller bandwidth. This generates interactions between the control and the filter bandwidths.
Also, another important key point in LCL resonance problems
is the robustness of the associated control strategy [4][8].
In this issue, two families of solutions can be distinguished:
passive damping and active damping. The former consists in the
addition of passive elements (usually a resistor) in series or in
parallel with the original LCL filter components. This solution
is a simple way to guarantee the stability, but it introduces
additional losses and imposes to oversize the power capability
of the converter [9]. To reduce the introduced damping losses,
several authors proposed different configurations and methods
to optimize the passive damping elements [2], [10], [11].
The principle of active damping is based on the modification
of the converter control algorithm. Thus, active damping methods do not generate additional losses or reconfiguration of the
power system [12][24]. The use of damping filters (low-pass
filters, notch filters, bi-quadratic filters, . . .) is the most common
solution [14][16]. The main idea is to produce an anti-peak at
the resonance frequency. As concluded in [14] and [15], the
damping performances of each filter are very efficient in case
of nominal parameters. But the damping is less efficient when
the system parameters vary. Then, a tradeoff should be made
between the damping performances under nominal conditions
and the robustness in case of parameter variations [15]. Another
way to actively damp the resonance is to add extra current or
voltage feedback. For example, a virtual resistor is proposed in
[17], [18], and a capacitor current feedback is proposed in [19],
[20]. In [21], for various resonance frequencies, a comparison

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HOUARI et al.: AC GRID SUPPLYING VOLTAGE-SOURCE CONVERTERS WITH LCL-FILTERS

703

TABLE I
S YSTEM PARAMETERS

Fig. 1.

Studied system.

of the damping properties between the damping techniques

based on the filter capacitor current feedback and the filter
capacitor voltage feedback is presented. The active damping
method with an extra feedback provides a high rejection of
the resonance. However, especially in case of capacitor current
methods, the required high-precision measurements increase
the cost. Of course, it still allows improving the damping of the
system without increasing the losses. In [25], the effectiveness
of the active damping methods for three distinct regions of the
LCL filter resonance is addressed. It is identified that active
damping solutions are essential for the control loop stability
in low resonant frequency region and they are not required for
high resonant frequency region and useless after the critical
resonant frequency where the system will be unstable whatever
the controller is.
To keep both the damping performances and robustness with
the employed damping method, a novel large-signal stabilizer
based on the direct Lyapunov theorem is proposed in this
paper. Contrary to other solutions [12][21], the design of the
stabilizer and the proof of stability are realized without using
a first-order linearization of the system equations. So, even if
the system state vector is moved far from its initial operating
point after a large external disturbance, we prove that the state
vector will converge asymptotically to its new operating point
corresponding to its new equilibrium after the disturbance. The
main idea of the proposed stabilizer is based on producing
a small perturbation on the input powers references of the
converter control to ensure the system stability. The large-signal
nature of the developed method allows keeping the damping
performances under a large change of the grid impedance.
This paper is organized as follows. At first, a description of
the studied system and its control are presented. Section III
introduces the proposed stabilizer based on the direct Lyapunov
theorem. Sections IV and V present, respectively simulation
and experimental results and discuss the effectiveness of the
proposed approach. Finally, Section VI summarizes the major
contributions of this work.
II. S YSTEM D ESCRIPTION AND C ONTROL
A. Presentation of the Studied System
The topology of the studied system is depicted in Fig. 1.
A voltage-source converter (VSC) is connected to the ac grid
(110 V50 Hz) through an LCL filter. The system parameters
can be found in Table I.
The resonance
 frequency of the LCL-filter is defined as
fres = (1/2) (Lg + Li )/Lg Li C.

Fig. 2. Overview of complete control structure.

B. Control Strategy
Fig. 2 presents the whole system with its control scheme.
The control algorithm can be divided into two blocks, the VSC
control block and the stabilizer block. The applied method to
control the VSC is based on a voltage oriented control [26],
[27]. It consists in an outer energy control loop and an inner
current control loop. Note that the determination of the line
voltage phase angle is done by a phase-locked loop (PLL)
algorithm. The proposed stabilizer provides stabilizing powers
superposed to the input power references of the VSC. The
design of the stabilizer is provided in the next section.
The outer loop regulates the energy stored in the DC
2
to its constant reference
link capacitor ydc = (1/2)Cdc Vdc

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, VOL. 51, NO. 1, JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015

2
ydcref = (1/2)Cdc Vdc0
= cte. The power at the input of the
VSC (PL ) is chosen as the control variable

y dc = PL Pdc

(1)

with PL = vcd iLd + vcq iLq and Pdc = Vdc idc .

The control law given by relation (2) ensures the asymptotic
convergence of the energy error to zero

2
0 = (y dcref y dc )+2e e (ydcref ydc )+e (ydcref ydc )
(2)
where e represents the desired cutoff frequency of the energy
controller. This dynamic is placed in such a manner to ensure
the control objective and to avoid interaction with the internal
current loops. e is the damping factor set between 0.7 and 1.
From (1) and (2), the control variable PLref is given by

PLref = Pdc +2e e (ydcref ydc )+e2 (ydcref ydc ). (3)
Then, the dq-currents references of the internal loops are
calculated

+vcq .QLref
iLdref = vcd .PLref
2 +v 2
vcd
cq
(4)
vcd .QLref
iLqref = vcq .PLref
.
v 2 +v 2
cd

cq

In this paper, the reactive power reference QLref 0 is set to zero.

For the control of the converter-side currents, PI controllers
are used. The control vector is expressed by






iLd iLdref
(iLd iLdref ) dt
vdref

= Kp
+ Ki
vqref
iLq iLqref
Lq iLqref) dt
  (i
ri

i
vcd
Ld
Li ri
+
. (5)
i
vcq
Li
Lq
It should be noticed that the third term in the right-hand side
allows compensating coupling terms between d and q axes. In
practice, Li and particularly ri are not known exactly and may
vary during the operation. However, we do not consider here
coupling due to the parameters uncertainties and assume that
it is effectively rejected by the current controllers. So, the controller design is simply based on a pole-placement technique.
The choice of the poles should allow obtaining a good current
THD at the nominal conditions. Indeed, faster current control
loop is, lower THDi is. Setting Kp = 2Li /i and Ki = Li /i2 ,
the poles are both placed on 1/i . The choice of i determines
the dynamic of the current control loop. Here, the choice of
i = 2/fs is made where fs is the sampling frequency.
In the following, it is assumed that the voltage references
vd_ref and vq_ref are normalized to the measured DC link voltage Vdc before generating PWM commands. We suppose also
that the delay due to the PWM and the digital implementation
of the control loops is negligible.
III. P ROPOSED S TABILIZATION M ETHOD
This section details the design of the large-signal stabilizer
based on the Lyapunov theorem. The Lyapunov approach is
one of the most powerful tools to study the stability of dynamic
systems. Compared with the damping methods based on local

stability as listed in the introduction, this method can prove

large-signal stability.
The main objective of the proposed stabilizer is to generate
active and reactive stabilizing powers (Pstab , Qstab ), which
modify the inner loop references in order to ensure the stability
(see Fig. 2).
This stabilizer is designed in two steps. First, a state-space
model of the system is developed. As usual, the model is
presented when the operating point of the system is moved to
the origin. This model is put under a linear form by pushing all
nonlinearities into the input vector. Then, a linear state feedback
law stabilizing the system has to be provided. Such a law exists
if the Lyapunov equation has a solution (sufficient condition).
This state feedback law ensures large-signal stability of the
system while the system remains controllable.
A. Modeling
The design first step consists in modeling the system. The
system considered here may be defined by
x = A.x + B.u.

(6)

The state variables are defined as large-signal variations of the

physical variables around the operating point of the system. Let
X0 stand for the value of the variable X at the operating point,
and x its large-signal variations defined by x = X X0 . In Practice, X0 corresponds to the average value of X obtained by a
narrow band low-pass filter. The cutoff frequency (p1 = p2 =
p ) of the filter is set to be sufficiently less than the LCL filter
resonance frequency, p  res . Here, p is set to res /100.
The linear terms are regrouped in the matrix A and B. u is the
feedback vector containing the nonlinearities of the system.
The normalization of the voltage reference allows decoupling
the operation of the current controllers from the DC link
voltage. So, the equations related to the DC part of the system
are not required in stability analysis. Therefore, the state-space
model of the system contains only variables corresponding to
the LCL filter and the inner current loops. Then, the influence
of the inner loops dynamics are integrated in the generated
stabilizing signals. Thus, the system is composed of eight
state variables: inductors dq-currents, capacitors dq-voltages,
converter-side dq-currents and two additional state variables
corresponding to the integral terms of the inner loops. The
system equation can be written as follows:

rg
d
1
1

dt id = Lg id + iq Lg vcd + Lg ed

r
g
1
1
d

dt iq = Lg iq id Lg vcq + Lg eq

1
d

vcd = C (id iLd ) + vcq

dt
d
1
dt vcq = C (iq iLq ) vcd
(7)
Kp
Ki
d

dt iLd = Li (iLd iLdref ) Li d

Kp

Ki
d

dt iLq = Li (iLq iLqref ) Li q

d = (iLd iLdref )

dt
d
dt q = (iLq iLqref )
with

x = [id , iq , vcd , vcq , iLd , iLq , d , q ]t

u = [ud , uq ]t = [iLdref , iLqref ]t .

HOUARI et al.: AC GRID SUPPLYING VOLTAGE-SOURCE CONVERTERS WITH LCL-FILTERS

To simplify the model, it is supposed that the grid voltage

is rather not affected by the loads power. In this case, the
dq-components of the grid voltages ed and eq are supposed to
be constant. So, the variations ed and eq are sufficiently small
and can be neglected in this paper (ed
= 0 and eq
= 0). It
can be noticed that the performance of the converter control
also depends on the grid impedance and the grid voltage which
can be distorted or unbalanced due to other loads connected
to the PCC. During the design of the proposed stabilizer, it
is supposed that these variations are insignificant. It is clear
that they can be taken into account in the theoretical study by
considering low frequency harmonics on ed and eq . However,
this aspect requires a whole paper and is out of the scope of
this paper.
For the stability analysis, the model (7) has to be put in the
form described in (6). The linear terms, regrouped in matrices
A and B, are given in theAppendix. The nonlinear terms related
to the load currents are given in


iLdref
u=
iLqref

PLref 0 +PLref )(vcd0 +vcd )+(QLref 0 +QLref )(vcq0 +vcq )

((v
+vcd )2 +(vcq0 +vcq )2 )
= (PLref 0 +PLref )(vcd0

cq0 +vcq )(QLref 0 +QL ref )(vcd0 +vcd )

((vcd0 +vcd )2 +(vcq0 +vcq )2 )

iLdref 0
iLqref 0


.

(8)

In the following paragraphs, PLref and QLref are noted,

respectively Pstab and Qstab .
Now, the model is developed. The Lyapunov theory is
applied to calculate the stabilizing feedback input u in the
following subsection.
B. Stabilizing Feedback
To stabilize the system, we propose the following stabilizing
input u:
u = (B D)T P x

(9)

where D is a diagonal positive semi-definite matrix and P is

the solution of the Lyapunov equation given in (10). P and Q
are symmetric positive-definite matrices [28]
AT P + P A + Q = 0.
By using (9), the system (6) can be expressed as


x(t)

= A B (B D)T P x(t).

(10)

(11)

It can be easily shown that the system (11) is stable if the

Lyapunov equation (10) has a solution. To solve the Lyapunov
equation (10), we use the lyap function of Matlab.
Then, the matrix D has to be defined. It is a diagonal weighting factor matrix as given in (12). Its role is to dispatch the
stabilizing effort between iLd and iLq . In [29], [30], the authors
advise to set D according to the loads dynamic or criticality.
Such a choice is useful for multi-load systems. Although, re-

705

garding the coupling between currents, voltages and powers for

the considered application here [see (8)], the weighting factors
d and q do not affect the stabilizing capability. Therefore, they
are both set to 1 in this paper



0
D= d
.
(12)
0 q
The matrix Q has to be set to get a sufficient stability margin.
This can be considered either as a pole placement problem or as
an optimization problem. Indeed, this matrix is directly related
to the matrix P which indirectly weights the amplitude and
the dynamic response of the stabilizing signals. A, B and D
are already fixed; only the matrix Q acts on the eigenvalues of
the closed-loop state matrix (A B(B D)T P ). This gives the
settling time of the system and the amplitude of the stabilizing
signals.
Here, the settling time of the stabilizer is set to 20 ms. To
achieve it, the matrix Q is fixed by trial and error to 109 I8 ,
with I8 the eight order identity matrix. Then, the eigenvalues of
the closed-loop state matrix are

48.4 + 3592.9i
48.4 3592.9i

48.4 + 2964.6i

48.4 2964.6i
(13)
=
.
3539.1 + 6368.7i

3539.1 6368.7i

3750.0 + 6495.2i
3750.0 6495.2i
Then, from (9), the stabilizing feedback u becomes


0 0 104 104 0.0281 0.0281 0 0
u=
x. (14)
0 0 104 104 0.0281 0.0281 0 0
After obtaining u from (14), we solve (8) for Pstab and Qstab .
This leads us to the following stabilizing powers:


Pstab
Qstab


PLref 0 + ((iLdref 0 + ud )vcd + (iLqref 0 + uq )vcq )
=
.
QLref 0 ((iLqref 0 + uq )vcd (iLdref 0 + ud )vcq )
(15)
Fig. 3 shows the simplified flowchart of the Matlab script
to calculate the stabilizing feedback matrix. Fig. 2 depicts the
location of the large-signal stabilizer in the original control
algorithm of the VSC.
Before simulation and experimental validation of the proposed stabilizer, a small signal analysis of the behavior of the
system with and without the proposed stabilizer is performed.
This analysis is based on the indirect Lyapunov theory [20]
which allows drawing conclusions about the local stability of
an equilibrium point of the studied system. The location of the
real part of the eigenvalues of the closed-loop system when the
active power varies from zero to 8 kW is presented in Fig. 4.
Here, we zoom on the eigenvalues close to the imaginary axis.
The reactive power reference (QLref 0 ) is set to zero.

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Fig. 3. Stabilizing feedback matrix calculation.

Fig. 4. Location of eigenvalues: without stabilization (top) and with the

proposed stabilizer (bottom).

Without stabilization (Fig. 4 top), the critical active power

(PLref 0 ) where instability appears is the power for which
there is at least one eigenvalue with positive real part. This
power for the studied system is 1.68 kW. With stabilization
(Fig. 4 bottom), the system remains stable for PLref 0 >
1.68 kW.
To analyze the behavior of the proposed stabilizer as regards
to the system parameter changes, the location of the eigenvalues
is plotted on Fig. 5 for 50% variation on Lg (Lg = 1.5Lgn
or Lg = 0.5Lgn ) and 30% on C (C = 1.3Cn or C = 0.7Cn )

Fig. 5. Evolution of the eigenvalues under parameter uncertainties with the

proposed stabilizer.

when the active power goes from zero to 8 kW. It can be

seen that the real part of the eigenvalues moves, respectively
to the left for Lg = 0.5Lgn and C = 1.3Cn and to he right for
Lg = 1.5Lgn and C = 0.7Cn . Note that the feedback matrix
(B.D)T P is constant and is computed using the nominal values
of the parameters.

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707

Fig. 6. Simulation results for active and reactive powers before and after
activating the proposed stabilizer.

Fig. 7.

Simulation results: Stabilizing powers.

These results highlight the robustness and impact of the proposed stabilizer under parameter uncertainties. So, the presence
of an additional inductance in the grid-side (such as transformers and additional connected loads through line inductances)
has a limited effect on the stability of the VSC when the
proposed stabilizer is on.

Fig. 8. Simulation results: LCL capacitors voltages (top), Grid-side currents

(middle), Converter-side-currents (bottom).

IV. S IMULATION R ESULTS

To verify the validity of the proposed stabilizer in Section III,
simulations have been performed using Matlab-Simulink. The
system parameters are listed in Table I. The DC-link of the VSC
is regulated to 280 V and the resistive load is set to have a
consumption of 1.7 kW.
Fig. 6 shows the simulated waveforms of the active and
reactive powers at the input of the converter before and after
applying the proposed stabilizer at t = 1.8 s. It can be seen
that the use of the proposed stabilizer allows damping the
oscillations.
Fig. 7 illustrates the behavior of the active and the reactive
stabilizing powers. After stabilizing the system, the stabilizing
effort converges to zero.
Fig. 8 shows the waveforms of the LCL capacitor voltages,
the grid-side and the converter-side currents before and after activating the proposed stabilizing method. When the stabilization
is activated, the undesired disturbances are canceled.
Fig. 9 shows the behavior of the system for three power steps
(resistive load, respectively corresponding to 1.5 kW, 1.7 kW
and 3 kW) before and after activating the proposed stabilizer.
The reactive power reference QLref 0 is set to zero. Without
stabilization [Fig. 9(a)], oscillations appear at 1.7 kW while at
3 kW, the system becomes completely unstable. The amplitude
of the oscillations at 1.7 kW are around 0.6 kW. When the largesignal stabilizer is on [Fig. 9(b)], the undesired disturbances are
damped.
It can be mentioned that the large-signal property of the
proposed stabilizer should be more powerful than small signal
techniques under large power variations. Although, the main

Fig. 9. Behavior of the measured powers, for different operating values.

(a) Without stabilization. (b) With the proposed stabilizer.

drawback of the proposed method is related to its design complexity compared to the existing small signal methods based on
linear tools. Also, the implementation of the proposed stabilizer
requires two additional voltage sensors to measure the voltages
at the grid side of the LCL filter for grid synchronization, while
the voltages at the filter capacitors are still required for power
control and damping of the system. The grid side voltage based
synchronization allows us to avoid the complexity of including
the dynamics of the PLL in the system model.
V. E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS
To study the effectiveness of the proposed large-signal stabilization technique, a test bed has been developed. Its block
diagram is shown in Fig. 1 and its parameters are listed in
Table I. The control algorithm is implemented on a dSpace 1005
board. The control dynamics and the parameters of the system
are the same as those used for the simulations.

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Fig. 12. Experimental measurements of the currents without and with stabilization. (a) Converter-side currents. (b) Grid-side currents.
Fig. 10. Experimental measurements of the active and reactive powers after a
step of the reference DC-link voltage from 260 V to 280 V (load power variation
from 1.5 to 1.7 kW). (a) Without stabilization. (b) With the proposed stabilizer.

Fig. 13. Experimental measurements of the grid-source voltage ea and the

LCL filter voltage vca before and after activating the proposed stabilizer.

Fig. 11. Experimental measurements of the active and the reactive powers
after a load step from 1.5 to 3 kW. (a) Without stabilization. (b) With the
proposed stabilizer.

Fig. 10 shows the behavior of the measured active and

reactive powers after a load step (resistive load). In practice,
this is realized by changing the DC-link voltage reference from
260 V to 280 V. As predicted by the simulation results, without
stabilization [Fig. 10(a)], oscillations appear around 1.7 kW.
On the other hand, with the proposed stabilizing method
[Fig. 10(b)], the system remains stable.
Fig. 11 illustrates the behavior of the active and reactive powers after a load step from 1.5 kW to 3 kW. Without stabilization
[Fig. 11(a)], the amplitude of the oscillations at 3 kW is very
high. The same test is performed when the proposed stabilizing
method is on [Fig. 11(b)]. The system remains stable.

Fig. 14. Experimental measurements of the stabilizing powers before and

after activating the proposed stabilizer.

Fig. 12 depicts the converter-side and the grid-side currents,

respectively without, and with the proposed stabilizer. It can be
seen that the resonance of the LCL filter is strongly attenuated
by applying the proposed damping technique. The measured
THD of the converter-side and the grid-side currents are, respectively 1.8% and 2% when the stabilizer is activated.
Fig. 13 shows the behavior of the grid-source voltage ea
and the LCL filter voltage vca before and after activating
the proposed stabilizer. The measured THD of the LCL filter
capacitor voltage with the stabilizer activated is about 2.3%.
Fig. 14 illustrates the behavior of the generated stabilizing
active and reactive powers. After stabilizing the system, the
amplitudes of the stabilizing powers go to zero.

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709

TABLE II
R ESONANCE F REQUENCY OF LCL F ILTERS

Fig. 16. Experimental measurements of the converter-side current iLa and its
spectrum before and after applying the proposed stabilizer, fres = 1.25 kHz.

strongly the resonance oscillations. Despite of an important

error in the model due to parameter variations, the proposed
stabilizer is still effective and damps efficiently resonances.
VI. C ONCLUSION

Fig. 15. Experimental measurements of the converter-side current iLa and its
spectrum before and after applying the proposed stabilizer, fres = 430 Hz.

For testing the robustness of the proposed stabilizer, several

tests are performed under parameter uncertainties. New passive
elements are used (see Table II). For this, the physical values of
inductances Lg and Li as well as the capacitor C are changed
leading to different resonant frequencies: 738 Hz for the nominal values, 1.23 kHz and 430 Hz for new elements. In the
same time, their nominal values are kept constant in the control
algorithm. Figs. 15 and 16 show the corresponding spectra of
the converter-side current iLa before and after applying the proposed stabilizer. As can be seen, the proposed method reduces

rg /Lg

rg /Lg

0
1/C

0
1/C

A=
0
0

0
0

0
0
0
0

0
0
0
0

0
0

0
0
B=

0
Kp /Li

Kp /Li
0

1
0
0
1

1/Lg
0
0

0
0
0
0

0
1/Lg

0
0
0
0
0

In this paper, the stability issues in a grid connected voltage

source converter were investigated. An LCL filter was used to
filter harmonics due to the switching. A large-signal stabilizer
based on the direct Lyapunov theorem was proposed to reject
LCL resonance instabilities. A detailed theoretical analysis and
the appropriate tools to synthesize the large-signal stabilizer
have been given.
The provided results show that the use of the proposed
stabilizer allows keeping both the damping performance and
the robustness with respect to parameter uncertainties or load
variations.
A PPENDIX
See matrices A and B at the bottom of the page.

0
0
1/C
0
Kp /Li
0
1
0

0
0
0
1/C
0
Kp /Li
0
1

0
0
0
0
Ki /Li
0
0
0

0
0

Ki /Li

0
0

710

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, VOL. 51, NO. 1, JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015

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Azeddine Houari received the B.Eng. degree from

Bejaia University, Bejaia, Algeria, in 2008 and
the Ph.D. degree from the Universit de Lorraine,
Vandoeuvre les Nancy, France, in 2012.
He is currently with the Groupe de Recherche
en Electrotechnique et Electronique de Nancy
(GREEN), University of Lorraine. His research interests include control of electrical systems, management of storage systems, stability studies, and
stabilization of distributed power systems.

Hugues Renaudineau received the B.Eng. degree

from the Ecole Normale Suprieure dElectricit
et de Mcanique (ENSEM), Nancy, France, in
2009, and the Ph.D. degree from the Universit de
Lorraine, Vandoeuvre les Nancy, France, in 2013.
He is currently with the Groupe de Recherche
en Electrotechnique et Electronique de Nancy
(GREEN), Universit de Lorraine. His research interests include modeling, control and diagnosis of
photovoltaic power systems, and fault-tolerant power
electronic systems.

Jean-Philippe Martin received the Ph.D. degree

from the Universit de Lorraine, Vandoeuvre les
Nancy, France, in 2003.
Since 2004, he has been an Assistant Professor
at INPL. His research activities in the Groupe de
Recherche en Electrotechnique et Electronique de
Nancy (GREEN), UMR/CNRS, include electrical
machine controls, static converter architectures, and
their interactions with new electrical devices (fuel
cell and photovoltaic systems).

HOUARI et al.: AC GRID SUPPLYING VOLTAGE-SOURCE CONVERTERS WITH LCL-FILTERS

Babak Nahid-Mobarakeh (M05SM12) received

the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the
Institut National Polytechnique de Lorraine (INPL),
Vandoeuvre les Nancy, France, in 2001.
From 2001 to 2006, he was an Assistant Professor with the Centre de Robotique, Electrotechnique
et Automatique, University of Picardie, Amiens,
France. In September 2006, he joined the Ecole
Normale Suprieure dElectricit et de Mcanique,
University of Lorraine, Nancy, where he is currently
an Associate Professor. He is also with the Groupe
de Recherche en Electrotechnique et Electronique de Nancy (GREEN). He is
the author or coauthor of more than 100 international journal and conference
papers. His main research interests include nonlinear and robust control techniques applied to electric systems, fault detection and fault-tolerant control of
power systems, and stabilization of microgrids.
Dr. Nahid-Mobarakeh was the recipient of the Best Paper Prize of the IEEE
Transportation Electrification Conference in 2013 and the Second Best Paper
Prize from the Industrial Automation and Control Committee at the IEEE
Industry Applications Society Annual Meeting in 2010.

Serge Pierfederici received B.Eng. degree in electrical engineering from the Ecole Normale Suprieure
dElectricit et de Mcanique (ENSEM), Nancy,
France, in 1994 and the Ph.D. degree from the Institut National Polytechnique de Lorraine (INPL),
Vandoeuvre les Nancy, France, in 1998.
Since 2009, he has been a Professor at INPL.
His research activities deal with stability studies of
distributed power systems and the control of multisources, multi-load systems.

711

Farid Meibody-Tabar received the B.Eng. degree

from the Ecole Nationale dElectricit et de Mcanique (ENSEM), Nancy, France, in 1982, and the
Ph.D. and the Habilitation diriger des recherches
degrees from the Institut National Polytechnique de
Lorraine (INPL), Vandoeuvre les Nancy, France, in
1986 and 2000, respectively.
Since 2000, he has been a Professor at INPL.
His research activities in the Groupe de Recherche
en Electrotechnique et Electronique de Nancy
(GREEN) deal with architecture and control of
power systems as well as electric machines, their supply, and their control and
diagnosis.