IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, VOL. 47, NO.
2, MARCH/APRIL 2011
Vector Control of Single-Phase Voltage-Source
Converters Based on Fictive-Axis Emulation
Behrooz Bahrani, Student Member, IEEE, Alfred Rufer, Fellow, IEEE,
Stephan Kenzelmann, Student Member, IEEE, and Luiz A. C. Lopes, Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—This paper presents an alternative way for the cur-
rent regulation of single-phase voltage-source dc–ac converters
in direct–quadrature (dq) synchronous reference frames. In a
dq reference frame, ac (time varying) quantities appear as dc
(time invariant) ones, allowing the controller to be designed the
same as dc–dc converters, presenting infinite control gain at the
steady-state operating point to achieve zero steady-state error.
The common approach is to create a set of imaginary quantities
orthogonal to those of the real single-phase system so as to obtain
dc quantities by means of a stationary-frame to rotating-frame
transformation. The orthogonal imaginary quantities in common
approaches are obtained by phase shifting the real components
by a quarter of the fundamental period. The introduction of such
delay in the system deteriorates the dynamic response, which
becomes slower and oscillatory. In the proposed approach of this
paper, the orthogonal quantities are generated by an imaginary
system called fictive axis, which runs concurrently with the real
one. The proposed approach, which is referred to as fictive-axis
emulation, effectively improves the poor dynamics of the conven-
tional approaches while not adding excessive complexity to the
controller structure.
Index Terms—Current control, fictive-axis emulation (FAE),
single-phase voltage-source converters (VSCs), vector control.
I. I NTRODUCTION
S INGLE-PHASE voltage-source converters (VSCs) with
regulated input currents are widely utilized in many grid-
interfaced systems, e.g., photovoltaic power applications [1],
active power filters [2], [3], power-factor controllers [4], [5],
etc. Recently, the high depth of penetration of distributed
energy resources has also intensified the demand for such
converters [6], [7]. In most of such systems, a VSC is interfaced
to the utility grid through a line reactor filter, and a current-
regulation strategy is adopted by the VSC to control its input
Manuscript received December 23, 2009; revised June 22, 2010;
accepted August 20, 2010. Date of publication December 23, 2010; date
of current version March 18, 2011. Paper 2009-IPCC-465.R1, presented at
the 2009 IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition, San Jose, CA,
September 20–24, and approved for publication in the IEEE T RANSACTIONS
ON I NDUSTRY A PPLICATIONS by the Industrial Power Converter Committee
of the IEEE Industry Applications Society.
B. Bahrani, A. Rufer, and S. Kenzelmann are with the Industrial Electronics
Laboratory (LEI), Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, 1015
Lausanne, Switzerland (e-mail: behrooz.bahrani@epfl.ch; alfred.rufer@
epfl.ch; stephan.kenzelmann@a3.epfl.ch).
L. A. C. Lopes is with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engi-
neering, Concordia University, Montreal, QC H4G 2M1, Canada (e-mail:
lalopes@ece.concordia.ca).
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.2010.2101992
0093-9994/$26.00 © 2010 IEEE
831
current, while the dc-link voltage is regulated by a relatively
slower control loop compared with that of the current [8].
During the last years, considerable research has been
conducted on the current regulation of VSCs, and various ap-
proaches have been proposed, e.g., hysteresis, deadbeat, predic-
tive, and proportional–integral (PI) and proportional–resonant
(PR)-based control strategies [9]–[16]. Generally, these
approaches can be categorized into two major classes:
1) stationary-frame controller and 2) synchronous-frame con-
troller. Among stationary-frame controllers, simple and linear
PI controllers are the most conventional approach. However,
due to their well-known drawbacks, e.g., nonzero steady-state
error, other approaches, such as PR controllers [10]–[12], have
been proposed, which can track ac reference signals in the
stationary frame with zero steady-state error. The PR control
approach is based on providing an infinite gain at the target fre-
quency (resonant frequency) for eliminating steady-state error
at that frequency, which is virtually similar to the infinite gain of
a PI controller at dc. The PR approach is relatively simple and
easy to implement for both single- and three-phase applications
while providing satisfactory performance; however, it suffers
from several drawbacks, e.g., sensitivity to small variations in
the interfaced-grid frequency, exponentially decaying transients
during step changes, and being pushed toward instability mar-
gins even by a small phase shift introduced by the utilized
current sensors [10].
Among synchronous-frame controllers, PI regulators have
been widely used for the current regulation of both single-
and three-phase systems [9], [17]–[22]. In a synchronous ref-
erence frame, usually referred to as dq frame, ac (time varying)
quantities appear as dc (time invariant) quantities allowing, the
controller to be designed as for dc–dc converters, presenting
infinite control gain at the steady-state operating point, and
leading to zero steady-state error. PI-based approaches can be
efficiently used for current regulation of three-phase VSCs;
however, they exhibit shortcomings when utilized in single-
phase systems. In single-phase systems, the common approach
is to create a set of imaginary quantities orthogonal to those
of the single-phase system so as to obtain dc quantities by
means of a stationary-to-rotating frame (αβ to dq) transforma-
tion [23]–[26]. The orthogonal imaginary-current component
is usually obtained by phase shifting the measured real signals
by a quarter of the fundamental period. The measured and the
shifted current components are then employed in an αβ–dq
transformation, and a conventional dq current controller with
decoupling strategy is used, and the output quantities of the
controller are backtransformed to the αβ frame to obtain the
832 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, VOL. 47, NO. 2, MARCH/APRIL 2011
Fig. 1. One-line diagram of the test system.
ac control signals. Usually, the α component of the control
signal is employed and fed into the pulse-width modulation
(PWM) modulator, while the β component is discarded. This
approach is relatively simple and straightforward; however, the
introduction of such delay in the system tends to deteriorate the
dynamic response, which becomes slower and oscillatory.
In this paper, an alternative current-regulation scheme is
proposed in which, instead of introducing a delay of a quarter
of a fundamental period, the β component of the control signal,
along with that of the grid voltage, is adopted in order to create
the imaginary current orthogonal to the converter current. The
created orthogonal current and the converter current are then
fed into a dq current regulator. Therefore, upon step changes
in the d or q reference values, the actual quantities in the real
and imaginary systems react at the same time and in the same
way to track the reference quantities. This is in contrast with the
common approaches in which the imaginary component reacts
a quarter of a cycle after the real component, which is the reason
of the relatively poor dynamic response of the conventional dq
control strategies in single-phase converters.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section II de-
scribes the utilized test system. Section III briefly explains the
adopted conventional dq current-control strategy. Section IV
presents the proposed control strategy based on fictive-axis
emulation (FAE). Section V evaluates the performance of the
proposed method based on simulation and experimental results
and compares its performance with that of the conventional
approach. Section VI evaluates the sensitivity of the proposed
method to the variations of system parameters, and Section VII
concludes this paper.
II. S YSTEM D ESCRIPTION
The power stage of Fig. 1 shows a one-line diagram of
the utilized test system in which a VSC is connected to the
utility grid through a series line reactor filter and a coupling
transformer. The filter is represented by inductor L and its asso-
ciated internal resistor R. These parameters also account for the
leakage inductance and the winding resistance of the coupling
transformer. The system parameters are given in Table I.
TABLE I
PARAMETERS OF THE S YSTEM OF F IG . 1
III. C URRENT R EGULATION W ITH PI C ONTROLLER IN THE
ROTATING R EFERENCE F RAME
As the proposed control strategy for single-phase VSCs is
largely based on the technique of vector control of three-phase
systems, this method is briefly explained first. Many vector-
control strategies are known, where several procedures are used
to design the controller parameters in order to achieve prede-
fined dynamics and decoupled axes. One of the best known
methods is based on structurally simple PI controllers and is
widely utilized in the literature [9], [17]–[22]. In the following,
this control scheme is briefly reviewed.
A. System Representation
Assume a three-phase system in which a three-phase VSC is
interfaced to the utility grid through a three-phase line reactor
filter and a three-phase coupling transformer. Fig. 1 can be a
one-line diagram representation of such a system, assuming
the single-phase variables are replaced by three-phase ones.
Therefore, the dynamics of the ac-side of such a system can
be described as
diabc
ua,abc = Riabc + L + ui,abc . (1)
dt
Transforming (1) from the abc frame to a stationary αβ frame,
the following is obtained:
diαβ
ua,αβ = Riαβ + L + ui,αβ . (2)
dt
In such a system, the representation of the electrical quantities
is usually achieved by adopting space phasors, which is the
same as the representation of physical quantities with complex
quantities [27], [28]. The corresponding differential equation
is given in (3) in which uas and usi represent the converter
terminal voltage and the utility grid voltage in the αβ reference
frame, respectively. Note that the underlined quantities repre-
sent complex quantities, which, in this case, consist of α and
β components, and superindex s represents quantities in the
stationary reference frame
dis
usa = Ris + L + usi . (3)
dt
Transforming the differential equation of (3) into the Laplace
domain, a structural diagram of the system in the sta-
tionary reference frame is drawn (Fig. 2). Applying a
stationary-to-synchronous transformation to (3) according to
BAHRANI et al.: VECTOR CONTROL OF SINGLE-PHASE VOLTAGE-SOURCE CONVERTERS BASED ON FAE 833

Fig. 2. Structural diagram of the test system in the stationary reference frame.

Fig. 4. Structural diagram of the dq current controller.

Fig. 5. Control loop for the current space phasor.

Fig. 3. Structural diagram of the test system in the rotating reference frame.

xdq = xαβ e−jωt , the dynamics of the ac-side variables in a B. Current Control Loop
rotating reference frame (dq frame) is derived The control loop for the current space phasor is shown in
         Fig. 5 in which the controller is represented by GR , and the
uad did /dt R −Lω id u
=L + + id . (4) transfer function GpE represents the behavior of the PWM
uaq diq /dt Lω R iq uiq
control of the converter, together with the additional time
According to (4), the structural diagram of Fig. 3 in the rotating delay caused by the sampled control as defined in [29]. An
reference frame is obtained, which contains the typical coupling equivalent sum of these delays is approximated by a first-
terms. Based on (4), in order to achieve decoupled control of id order element, as described in (8). Note that the used transfer
and iq , the converter voltage should be controlled as follows: function corresponds to a pseudocontinuous representation of
a real phenomena considering mean values of the electrical
uad = ucd − Lωiq + uid quantities
uaq = ucq + Lωid + uiq (5) Kcm
usa = us . (8)
1 + sTpE pE
in which ucd and ucq represent the control signals. By substi-   
s (s)
tuting uad and uaq from (5) into (4), the following decoupled GpE
system is deduced:
       Transforming GspE (s) from a stationary to a rotating refer-
ucd did /dt R 0 id ence frame, the following is deduced:
=L + . (6)
ucq diq /dt 0 R iq
Kcm
GpE (s) = . (9)
Therefore, the transfer function of the decoupled system is 1 + (s + jωn )TpE
derived as follows, in which the time constant Ts is equal to
L/R, and Ks = 1/R: GpE (s) contains a coupling term that must be evaluated by
the magnitude of its effect. Since the switching frequency
Ks
Gs (s) = . (7) of the converter is considerably higher than the fundamental
1 + sTs frequency, the coupling term jωTpE can be neglected, which
Note that, since id and iq respond to ucd and ucq through a leads to
simple first-order transfer function, the control rule of (5) is Kcm
completed by defining feedback loops and using simple first- GpE (s) = . (10)
(1 + sTpE )
order PI controllers [9]. Based on (5), the structural diagram of
the current regulator based on PI controllers is shown in Fig. 4 Therefore, the controller is designed based on the open-loop
in which the voltage feedforward and the coupling terms are transfer function G0 (s) (Fig. 5), which is presented as
shown. The design procedure of the PI controllers and their
associated control loops are detailed in the next section. G0 (s) = GR (s)GpE (s)Gs (s). (11)
834 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, VOL. 47, NO. 2, MARCH/APRIL 2011

By substituting Gs and GpE from (7) and (10), respectively,

into (11), the open-loop transfer function can be written as
Kcm Ks
G0 (s) = GR (s) . (12)
(1 + sTpE ) 1 + sTs

A conventional PI controller is then adopted as GR (s) in order

to achieve the prespecified dynamics. Therefore
1 + sTn
GR (s) = . (13)
sTi

The controller time constant Tn is chosen to be equal to the

dominant time constant Ts , allowing the simplification of (12),
leading to
K
Go (s) = (14)
sTi (1 + sTpE )

in which K = Kcm Ks . The open-loop transfer function has

now a normal polynomial form without complex factors. The
remaining parameter to design is the integration time constant
Ti that can be determined by usual criteria on the phase
margin [29].

Fig. 6. Test system along with the conventional single-phase current-

IV. C ONTROL OF S INGLE -P HASE S YSTEMS BASED ON FAE regulation scheme.

The control strategy of the previous section necessitates a

stationary-to-rotating reference-frame transformation, which,
in three-phase systems, is viable through an abc to αβ and
then an αβ to dq transformation. Since the transformation to
a rotating reference frame requires two orthogonal signals, i.e.,
α and β, such a transformation cannot be directly applied to
single-phase systems as the variables in a single-phase system
contain only one component. Therefore, to make the afore-
mentioned current-control strategy applicable to single-phase
systems, fictitious variables orthogonal to the existing physical
ones should be created such that the physical and fictitious
variables together form the stationary or αβ frame.
To obviate the aforementioned shortcoming, one solution is
to generate the fictive orthogonal components by phase shifting
the physical ones a quarter of a fundamental period [23]–[26].
In such a case, the physical single-phase variables form the
α-axis of the conventional dq current controller of Section III,
while the fictive variables represent the β-axis. The α- and
β-axes are first transformed to a rotating reference frame in
which the conventional dq current controller is implemented.
Then, the resulting control signals in the dq reference frame are
transferred back to the αβ frame, and the α component of the
control signals is fed into the PWM modulator, while its β com-
ponent is discarded. The structural diagram of this controller is
shown in Fig. 6. Note that, to generate the reference phase angle
for the stationary-to-rotating reference-frame transformation, a
single-phase phase-locked loop (PLL) based on second-order
generalized integrator (SOGI) [30] is used. By using SOGI, the
utilized PLL generates the required orthogonal component of
the voltage concurrently with the physical axis and prevents
the introduction of delay to create that. Note that this approach
cannot be tailored for the generation of the required component
of the current as it introduces additional dynamics to the current
loop, which might make it unstable.
Apart from the required orthogonal component of the volt-
age, that of the current is also needed. Phase shifting the
current to create the required orthogonal signal deteriorates the
dynamics of the system, as the physical and fictive axes do not
run concurrently. Therefore, any transient in the physical axis
is also experienced in the fictive axis a quarter of fundamental
period later. Since the reference current is subject to frequent
step changes, delaying the current deteriorates the dynamics of
the system and makes it slower and oscillatory. To obviate this
shortcoming, the orthogonal component of the current must be
concurrently generated with the physical-axis current.
Fig. 7 shows the proposed control strategy of this paper,
in which FAE is used to concurrently generate the orthogonal
component of the current. To obtain the imaginary component
of a voltage space phasor, the line voltage is measured and
fed into a SOGI-based single-phase PLL. The real part of the
current space phasor is obtained through the real physical cur-
rent measured in the single-phase system. Then, the orthogonal-
current component is emulated as a fictive one with the FAE
block inside the controller system. The FAE block is the transfer
function of the real system realized in time domain, which is
basically implemented based on the structural diagram of the
test system in the stationary reference frame (Fig. 2). Then,
the classical αβ to dq transformation is used, followed by a dq
controller, as described in Section III. The link to the system is
made through a dqαβ transformation. The real-component path
is closed through the physical system, and the imaginary path is
closed through the fictive-axis emulator. The detailed structural
diagram of the fictive-axis emulator is shown in Fig. 8. Note
BAHRANI et al.: VECTOR CONTROL OF SINGLE-PHASE VOLTAGE-SOURCE CONVERTERS BASED ON FAE
Fig. 7. Test system along with the proposed current-control scheme based on
FAE.
Fig. 8. Detailed functional diagram of the fictive-axis emulator.
that an additional block has been introduced in the FAE (Ucmd )
in order to take into account the small time constant associated
with a fictive PWM modulator delay, such that a symmetry is
obtained between the real and imaginary axes.
V. P ERFORMANCE E VALUATION
The purpose of this section is to evaluate the performance
of the FAE-based regulator based on simulation and exper-
iment and also to compare it with that of the delay-based
control strategy. For the comparison, in a simulation test bench,
a reference tracking test is conducted for each controller.
Moreover, for the experimental performance evaluation of the
FAE-based method, the same reference tracking test is car-
ried out. The presented test results show that the proposed
FAE-based controller has the following characteristics: 1) It
is capable of tracking reference signals with zero steady-state
error within few milliseconds; 2) it does not impose excessive
oscillation to the system; and 3) contrary to the conventional
approach, it does not suffer from oscillatory dynamics.
To implement the control strategy and the FAE, a 16-b
digital signal controller developed by Microchip, i.e.,
dsPIC30F6010A, which provides a C programming environ-
835
ment, is used. The control and the signal-processing algorithms
are first discretized by using the bilinear method [31] and then
developed into C codes.
A. Simulation-Based Performance Comparison
To evaluate the performance of the proposed current-control
scheme and to compare it with that of the delay-based method,
a simulation test bench is developed in Simulink/MATLAB
software environment. The test system of Fig. 7 is utilized,
and its parameters are set based on Table I. In the following,
a reference tracking test is conducted for each controller, and
their performances are contrasted.
1) Delay-Based Controller: Adopting the control strategy
of Fig. 6 with a bandwidth of 200 Hz, the inverter is initially
injecting zero current. At time instant t = 0.343 s, the reference
value of the q-axis steps up to 1 per unit (p.u.). Moreover,
at time instant t = 0.357, the reference values of both d- and
q-axes are changed to 0.8 and 0.6 p.u., respectively. As shown
in Fig. 9(a), since the grid is stiff enough, the grid voltage,
i.e., the α component, and accordingly, the generated orthog-
onal voltage, i.e., the β component, do not change during the
step changes. However, subsequent to the step changes in the
d- and/or q-axis references, the controller tries to regulate
the α current at the desired value; however, due to exces-
sive transients, there is an overshoot in the regulated current
[Fig. 9(b)]. Moreover, as shown in Fig. 9(c), the d- and q-axes of
the currents experience non-negligible transients for even more
than a quarter of a cycle due to the delay used in the controller.
Therefore, it takes more than a quarter of cycle for the d and
q components of the current to track the requested reference
values. The conducted study demonstrates that the delay-based
control scheme suffers from excessive transients subsequent to
any step change in its d- and/or q-axes.
Note that in the steady state, the controller can regulate the
current with zero steady-state error. Moreover, the measured
total harmonic distortion (THD) of the current in the steady-
state is 3.9%.
2) FAE-Based Controller: In order to fairly compare the
performance of the methods, exactly the same test as that of
the previous section is conducted for the FAE-based approach,
and the same PI controllers with the same bandwidth of 200 Hz
are utilized. The inverter of Fig. 7 is initially injecting zero
current. At time instant t = 0.343 s, the reference value of the
q-axis steps up to 1 p.u. Moreover, at time instant t = 0.357, the
reference values of both d- and q-axes are changed to 0.8 and
0.6 p.u., respectively. The grid voltage, i.e., the α component,
and accordingly, the generated orthogonal voltage, i.e., the β
component, do not change during the step changes as they are
regulated by the grid at the rated value [Fig. 10(a)]. However,
subsequent to the step changes in the d- and q-axes references,
both α and β currents track the desired reference values in
almost 1 ms with zero steady-state error [Fig. 10(b)]. Moreover,
as shown in Fig. 10(c), the d- and q-axes of the currents track
the reference values in almost 1 ms with zero steady-state error.
The conducted study demonstrates that the proposed vector-
control scheme works as if the system is with multiple phases
represented by space-phasors; however, the components of the
836 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, VOL. 47, NO. 2, MARCH/APRIL 2011
Fig. 9. Simulation results of the transient response of the conventional delay-
based controller: (a) The grid voltage and its associated orthogonal component.
(b) The converter current and its emulated orthogonal component. (c) The
d- and q-axes corresponding to the converter current and its emulated
component.
Fig. 10. Simulation results of the transient response of the FAE-based con-
troller: (a) The grid voltage and its associated orthogonal component. (b) The
converter current and its emulated orthogonal component. (c) The d- and q-axes
corresponding to the converter current and its emulated component.
fictive space phasors correspond to a physical quantity for the
real part and to a fictive quantity for the imaginary part.
It should be noted that similar to the delay-based controller,
the controller is capable of regulating the current with zero
steady-state error. Moreover, the measured THD of the current
in the steady state is 4%, which verifies that the performances
of the controllers in the steady state are quite similar. How-
ever, the reported studies verify that the proposed FAE-based
method has superior dynamic performance compared with that
of the conventional delay-based approach. In the following,
the performance of the proposed FAE-based controller is also
experimentally evaluated.
Fig. 11. Experimental setup.
B. Experimental Performance Evaluation of FAE-Based
Controller
In this test, the performance of the proposed FAE-based
current control scheme is experimentally evaluated. The test
system of Fig. 7 is adopted, and a prototype (Fig. 11) is
implemented based on that. The VSC initially injects zero
current as both d and q reference values are set to zero. At
time instant t = 0.343 s, the reference value of the q-axis steps
up to 1 p.u., and at time instant t = 0.357 s, the reference
values for both d- and q-axes are changed to 0.8 and 0.6 p.u.,
respectively. The grid regulates its voltage and, consequently,
its orthogonal component at the rated value during the tran-
sients [Fig. 12(a)]. However, upon each step change, the α
current, i.e., the converter current, and the β current, i.e.,
the fictive-axis current, and the corresponding d- and q-axes
change to track the reference-value step changes in almost 1 ms
[Fig. 12(b) and (c)]. Note that the simulation and the exper-
imental results of the FAE-based controller do agree, which
verifies the validity of the proposed control scheme.
VI. S ENSITIVITY TO S YSTEM PARAMETERS
In this section, the sensitivity of the proposed control strategy
to inconsistencies between the physical and fictive system
parameters, i.e., L and R and LFAE and RFAE , is investigated.
To do so, the parameters of the physical axis are set based
on the value presented in Table I; however, it is assumed that
due to variations or tolerances in the parameters, the fictive-
axis parameters are not the same as those of the physical axis.
Note that temperature, aging, etc., can result in such parameter
variations. In the following, the effect of the aforementioned
parameter variations on the performance of the controller is an-
alytically investigated. Then, in order to evaluate the robustness
of the proposed controller, two case studies are carried out in
Simulink/MATLAB software environment: 1) The parameters
of the fictive axis are taken as LFAE = 10 mH and RF AE =
0.30 Ω, and the bandwidth of the controller is set to 200 Hz; and
2) the fictive-axis parameters are the same as in the previous
test; however, the bandwidth of the controller is increased to
1000 Hz.
BAHRANI et al.: VECTOR CONTROL OF SINGLE-PHASE VOLTAGE-SOURCE CONVERTERS BASED ON FAE 837

with , , , and .
Moreover, i∗αβ stands for the complex conjugate of iαβ .
Equation (17) verifies that if RFAE and LFAE are close to Rt
and Lt , the disturbance signal decreases, and the dynamics
of the system resembles the dynamics of a balanced two-phase
system, as described in (2).
The goal of the controller is to track the reference values of
the d and q components in the synchronous reference frame
such that in the stationary frame, the αβ currents form a
positive-sequence current, i.e., i = Iejω0 t . Moreover, the grid
voltage and its orthogonal component form a positive-sequence
set of voltages, i.e., ui = Ui ejω0 t . Therefore, by replacing iαβ
and ui,αβ with Iejω0 t and Ui ejω0 t in (16), respectively, the
following is deduced:

(18)

in which . By multiplying (18) by

Fig. 12. Experimental results of the transient response of the controller: e−jω0 t , the dynamics of the system in a synchronous positive-
(a) The grid voltage and its associated orthogonal component. (b) The con-
verter current and its emulated orthogonal component. (c) The d- and q-axes
sequence reference frame is derived
corresponding to the converter current and its emulated component.
(19)

Equation (19) shows that, in the case of an unbalanced system,

in order to perfectly track the reference signals, the controller
must be able to provide a double-frequency component along
with its required dc one. However, since PI regulators are
adopted in the proposed control strategy, the inverter cannot
fully support the provision of double-frequency components,
i.e., .
As analytically shown, possible errors between the actual R
and L values and the ones in the fictive circuit would result
Fig. 13. Simplified model of the test system along with the fictive axis. in second-order components. However, the resulting second-
order components could be attenuated by using a high crossover
A. Effect of Axis Imbalance on the Controller frequency/bandwidth for the current control loop. In addition,
since these errors should be relatively small, it should not create
Assuming the simplified model of the test system along with any significant problems for the proposed technique. Note that
the fictive axis (Fig. 13), the dynamics of the ac-side variables even if the bandwidth of the controller is not high enough, the
can be represented by system is still stable; however, the d and q components of the
current may contain significant amount of double-frequency
diα
ua,α = Riα + L + ui,α ripple. In the following section, to evaluate the sensitivity of
dt the proposed controller to axis-parameter mismatch, two simu-
diβ lation case studies are conducted in Simulink/MATLAB. In the
ua,β = RFAE iβ + LFAE + ui,β (15)
dt tests, the errors of the fictive-axis parameters, i.e., RFAE and
LFAE , are significant and assumed to be 100%, which is quite
in which ua , ui , and i represent the αβ components of the unlikely to happen in reality. In one case study, the bandwidth
inverter output voltage, grid voltage, and the inverter current of the controller is set to 200 Hz, while in the second test, the
in a stationary reference frame, respectively. By assuming that bandwidth is 1000 Hz.
the parameters of the real and fictive axis are not the same, the It should be noted that as the derived mathematical model
resulting vector model is derived as [32] of (19) contains time-varying constants, i.e., e−2jω0 t , then the
system cannot be referred to as linear time invariant. Therefore,
its exact sensitivity analysis is not straightforward and is beyond
(16) the scope of this paper.

where B. Sensitivity Tests

In the following, two case studies are conducted in order
(17)
to evaluate the sensitivity of the proposed controller to the
838 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, VOL. 47, NO. 2, MARCH/APRIL 2011
Fig. 14. Simulation results of the transient response of the unbalanced system
with controller bandwidth of 200 Hz: (a) The grid voltage and its associated
orthogonal component. (b) The converter current and its emulated orthogonal
component. (c) The d- and q-axes corresponding to the converter current and
its emulated component.
axis-parameter variations. In the conducted tests, it is assumed
that due to measurement errors, the parameters of the fictive
axes are set to LFAE = 10 mH and RFAE = 0.30 Ω. Note that
these parameters correspond to 100% parameter measurement
error, which is significant and is unlikely to happen in reality.
However, to show the robustness of the proposed controller,
such a significant measurement error is assumed. In the first
case, the bandwidth of the controller is tuned to 200 Hz, while
in the second one, it is 1000 Hz.
Note that the tests are conducted in Simulink/MATLAB
software environment.
First Test: The test system of Fig. 7 is utilized, and its
parameters are set based on Table I, except for the fictive-axis
parameters, which are selected as follows: LFAE = 10 mH and
RFAE = 0.30 Ω. The adopted controller of this test is the same
as that of Section V-A with a bandwidth of 200 Hz. Moreover,
in order to fairly compare the performance of the method under
such conditions with the performance of the method under ideal
conditions, i.e., balanced axes, the same test as that presented
in Section V-A is carried out. The VSC initially injects zero
current. At time instant t = 0.343 s, the reference value of the
q-axis steps up to 1 p.u. Moreover, at time instant t = 0.357,
the reference values of both d- and q-axes are changed to 0.8
and 0.6 p.u., respectively. Fig. 14(a) shows the grid voltage and
its orthogonal component, which remain unchanged during the
step changes. As shown in Fig. 14(b) and (c), despite the in-
consistency between the real- and physical-axis parameters, the
proposed control scheme is capable of tracking the reference
signals in almost 1.5 ms. However, due to the axis-parameter
mismatch and the low bandwidth of the controller, the dq
components of the currents contain nonnegligible amount of
double-frequency ripple. Note that in this case, the speed of
the controller in tracking the reference signals is slightly less
than in the case of Section V-A. The reason is that the utilized
Fig. 15. Simulation results of the transient response of the unbalanced system
with controller bandwidth of 1000 Hz: (a) The grid voltage and its associated
orthogonal component. (b) The converter current and its emulated orthogonal
component. (c) The d- and q-axes corresponding to the converter current and
its emulated component.
PI controller, which is utilized for both d and q components,
is designed based on the fictive-axis parameters, i.e., LFAE and
RFAE , and the inconsistency between the real- and fictive-axis
results in a slightly slower controller.
Second Test: The conducted test of this section is also the
same as that carried out in the previous section; however, the
bandwidth of the controller is tuned to 1000 Hz, which results
in a faster controller. The test system is initially injecting zero
current. However, at time instant t = 0.343 s, the reference
value of the q-axis steps up to 1 p.u. Moreover, at time instant
t = 0.357, the reference values of both d- and q-axes are
changed to 0.8 and 0.6 p.u., respectively. Fig. 15(a) shows
the grid voltage and its orthogonal component, which remain
unchanged during the step changes. However, the αβ and dq
currents track their reference values in almost 1 ms with zero
steady-state error [Fig. 15(b) and (c)]. In this case, due to the
high bandwidth of the controller, it is capable of attenuating
the second-order component of the current, and therefore, the
double frequency of the dq components of the current are much
lower than in the previous case and is almost negligible.
Note that despite the large inconsistencies between the real-
and the fictive-axis parameters in the conducted tests, subse-
quent to the imposed step changes in the reference values, the
proposed control scheme is capable of regulating the current in
less than 1 ms with zero steady-state error.
VII. C ONCLUSION
A new vector-control strategy for the current regulation of
single-phase VSCs has been proposed. Similar to conventional
approaches, in order to form a stationary and synchronous
frame, orthogonal components are generated for both voltage
and current. The orthogonal component of the voltage is gen-
erated by a SOGI-based PLL. The conventional approaches
adopt phase shifting in order to create the orthogonal current,
BAHRANI et al.: VECTOR CONTROL OF SINGLE-PHASE VOLTAGE-SOURCE CONVERTERS BASED ON FAE
which can result in poor transient response. However, the
proposed control strategy generates the required orthogonal
current concurrently with the physical system. The proposed
countermeasure generates the required orthogonal-current com-
ponent by a fictive-axis emulator, which results in fast and non-
oscillatory dynamics. The performance of the proposed control
strategy was evaluated based on simulation and experiment, and
moreover, it was compared with that of conventional delay-
based approach. Also, the sensitivity of the method with respect
to the inconsistencies between the physical- and fictive-axis
parameters was investigated. The conducted studies conclude
that the proposed method is characterized by the following.
1) It can maintain the stability of the system and track
reference values with zero steady error.
2) It is much faster than the conventional approach.
3) It has superior dynamic response compared with the
conventional approach.
4) It is robust with respect to inconsistencies in the physical-
and fictive-axis parameters.
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Behrooz Bahrani (S’07) received the B.Sc. degree
in electrical engineering from Sharif University of
Technology, Tehran, Iran, in 2006, and the M.Sc.
degree in electrical engineering from the University
of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada, in 2008. He is cur-
rently working toward the Ph.D. degree at the Swiss
Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL),
Lausanne, Switzerland.
From May to November 2008, he was a Research
Intern at ABB Corporate Research Ltd., Dättwil-
Baden, Switzerland. His research interests include
power electronics, applications of power electronics in power systems, and
distributed generation.
840 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, VOL. 47, NO. 2, MARCH/APRIL 2011

Alfred Rufer (M’95–SM’01–F’06) received the Luiz A. C. Lopes (S’93–M’96–SM’06) received

M.S. degree from the Swiss Federal Institute of Tech-
nology Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland,
in 1976.
In 1978, he joined ABB, Turgi, Switzerland,
where he was involved in the fields of power elec-
tronics and control, such as high-power variable-
frequency converters for drives, and where became
a Group Leader involved with power electronic de-
velopment beginning in 1985. In 1993, he became
an Assistant Professor at EPFL, where, since 1996,
he has been a Full Professor and the Head of the Industrial Electronics
Laboratory (LEI). LEI is active in power electronics used in energy conversion
and energy storage and in the modeling and simulation of systems, including
control strategies and control circuits. He has authored or coauthored many
publications on power electronics and applications, such as for multilevel
converters or for different energy-storage systems. He is the holder of several
patents.
the M.Sc. degree from the Federal University of
Santa Catarina, Florianopolis, Brazil, in 1989, and
the Ph.D. degree from McGill University, Montreal,
QC, Canada, in 1996.
From 1996 to 2001, he was an Associate Professor
in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engi-
neering, Federal University of Para, Belem, Brazil.
He is currently an Associate Professor in the De-
partment of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
Concordia University, Montreal, where he has been
since 2002. His current research interests include distributed power systems and
renewable energy sources.

Stephan Kenzelmann (S’09) received the M.Sc. de-

gree in electrical engineering from the Swiss Federal
Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne,
Switzerland, in 2007, where he is currently working
toward the Ph.D. degree in the Industrial Electronics
Laboratory (LEI).
His research interests include single-phase control
methods, multilevel converter control, and research
and development of new power electronic systems
for dc power transmission.