Optimal controller gains for inner current controllers in VSC inverters

The standard method for controlling an IGBT inverter (or any VSC inverter for that matter) is by vector current control. This control system consists of two cascaded control loops. One possible realisation of the outer controller is to control the DC bus voltage such that no more power is taken off the DC bus than is available. This creates a current reference, which is fed into the inner current controller. The inner current controller then regulates the current passing through the IGBT such that the desired power is dispatched onto the grid. Whilst most research treats the grid connection as a simple RL circuit, there is little consistency on the method by which the gains of the inner current controller are selected. Internal model control, modulus optimum and root locus methods are just a few of the methods used to find the gains. However, it is not clear which of these methods yields the best performance of the inner current controller. This work suggests that tuning on phase margin or manually tuning may not achieve the best results.