Wide-area Virtual Power System Stabilizer Design for Mitigating Inter-area Oscillations

With the increase of inverter-based resources and the expansion of networks, maintaining system damping has become increasingly challenging. As synchronous generators are gradually retired, traditional power system stabilizers (PSSs) are also phased out, making power systems difficult to handle with inter-area oscillations. Wide-area measurement systems (WAMS) enable the wide-area damping controllers (WADCs) to utilize remote signals to improve the system's small signal stability performance. This paper proposed a wide-area virtual power system stabilizer (VPSS) to mitigate inter-area oscillations in inverter-dominated power systems. The proposed VPSS is a controller designed for virtual synchronous generators (VSGs) which have emerged as a promising inverter technology capable of imitating the behaviour of conventional synchronous generators in modern power systems. The wide-area VPSS provides a supplementary signal to adjust the real power reference of the virtual synchronous generator. Unlike the traditional wide area damping controllers, this VPSS is specifically developed for power electronic-based resources. The performance of the proposed VPSS is evaluated using DIgSILENT/PowerFactory. These simulations demonstrate the VPSS's capabilities to effectively suppress inter-area oscillations and enhance system damping.