Harmonic Stability in Power Electronic Based Power Systems: Concept, Modeling, and Analysis

The large-scale integration of power electronic based systems poses new challenges to the stability and power quality of modern power grids. The wide timescale and frequency-coupling dynamics of electronic power converters tend to bring in harmonic instability in the form of resonances or abnormal harmonics in a wide frequency range. This paper provides a systematic analysis of harmonic stability in the future power-electronic-based power systems. The basic concept and phenomena of harmonic stability are elaborated first. It is pointed out that the harmonic stability is a breed of small-signal stability problems, featuring the waveform distortions at the frequencies above and below the fundamental frequency of the system. The linearized models of converters and system analysis methods are then discussed. It reveals that the linearized models of ac-dc converters can be generalized to the harmonic transfer function, which is mathematically derived from linear time-periodic system theory. Lastly, future challenges on the system modeling and analysis of harmonic stability in large-scale power electronic based power grids are summarized.