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J. Xiao

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17 records found

Journal article (2026) - J. Xiao, L. Wang, X. Du, P. Rodriguez , Z. Qin
Active power oscillations (APOs) frequently arise in inverter-dominated power systems with multiple converters operating under virtual synchronous generator (VSG) control, posing risks to system stability and protection coordination. While various mitigation strategies have been proposed, many rely on prior knowledge of system parameters, offer limited damping performance, or involve complex models that lack physical interpretability—making them difficult to apply in practice. To address these challenges, this article first introduces a physically intuitive resistor-inductor-capacitor (RLC) equivalent circuit model to explain the root causes of APOs in both stand-alone (SA) and grid-connected (GC) modes. By mapping inertia, damping, and feeder impedance to capacitive, resistive, and inductive elements, respectively, the model reveals how mismatches among converters lead to interunit oscillations characterized by LC resonance. Building on this insight, we propose two mode-specific mitigation strategies: 1) in SA mode, a graph-theory-based impedance control ensures proportional reactive power sharing and effectively suppresses APOs; and 2) in GC mode, adaptive inertia and damping control with feedforward loop is designed to reshape transient power dynamics while preserving frequency stability. The proposed methods are validated through extensive simulations and real-time hardware-in-the-loop experiments, demonstrating their effectiveness in suppressing oscillations and enhancing the robustness of multiconverter power systems. ...
Doctoral thesis (2025) - J. Xiao, P. Bauer, Z. Qin
The integration of renewable energy resources has seen a marked increase in recent decades, driven by the need to address the growing severity of the global energy crisis. Distributed generators, which incorporate renewable energy sources alongside energy storage systems, present a viable pathway toward achieving substantial economic and environmental benefits.
In the context of microgrids, maintaining frequency and voltage amplitude within prescribed limits is essential for stable operation. Furthermore, the proper distribution of power—including active, reactive, and harmonic components—among interconnected converters is critical to achieving balanced performance under steady-state conditions. During dynamic transitions, it is equally important for voltage and power levels to evolve smoothly, ensuring a seamless adjustment to the steady-state operating point.... ...
Conference paper (2025) - Fan Yang, Haoyuan Yu, Junjie Xiao, Pavol Bauer, Zian Qin, Saran Ganesh, Toshi Sharma, Amulya Sahoo, Martijn Lunshof, Cor Van Kruijsdijk
Highly self-sufficient energy hubs offer a promising solution to mitigate grid congestion in favor of grid operators and to reduce grid fees for the benefit of energy hub operators. Meanwhile, the energy hub's capacity may far exceed the grid connection capacity, creating a weak grid situation. As a result, power quality issues such as voltage fluctuations, frequency deviations, and even instability may occur. In this work, a grid-forming energy storage system (GFM-ESS) is integrated to address these potential problems. A model of the GFM-ESS and energy hub is established based on a 50 kW PV-Hydrogen energy hub demonstrator, where PV-generated power is utilized for green hydrogen production. A trade-off design is proposed to identify the optimal balance between the capacity of the GFM-ESS and the grid connection. The voltage and frequency response at the hub's bus are analyzed to evaluate this trade-off. While experiments with the 50 kW demonstrator are ongoing, simulation results are provided to validate the effectiveness of the proposed design. ...
Journal article (2025) - Junjie Xiao, Lu Wang, Pavol Bauer, Zian Qin
Consensus algorithm-based secondary control, such as virtual impedance, is typically used to achieve power-sharing and ensure stable operation in microgrids. The introduction of communication, however, increases the system's vulnerability. Communication failure, e.g., under cyber attack or disruption, can lead to a huge loss. To solve this, this article proposes a signal reconstruction approach for the miscommunicated signals. The power-sharing convergence, both in normal conditions and under communication failure, is analyzed via the Lyapunov method. The feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed approach are validated on a lab-scale microgrid. ...
Conference paper (2025) - J. Xiao, P. Bauer, Zian Qin
Active power oscillation (APO) issues may arise during the deployment of multiple parallel converters with Virtual Synchronous Generator (VSG) control in Microgrids. To that end, the equivalent circuit models of a converter with VSG control are proposed, which intuitively reveals the root cause of APOs. Accordingly, a graph-theory-based virtual impedance is introduced to harmonize parameters among involved VSGs, effectively eliminating APOs. Simulation and experimental results verify the improvements of the proposed control.
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Journal article (2025) - Junjie Xiao, Lu Wang, Qobad Shafiee, Pavol Bauer, Zian Qin
Distributed secondary control achieves voltage restoration and power sharing through communication among adjacent units but exposes the microgrid to potential cyber-attacks. Traditional mitigation strategies modify the secondary controller after the attack, addressing the issue only postoccurrence. Furthermore, in microgrid planning, the structure of the communication network significantly influences the resilience to attacks, but it remains to be explored. This article presents a proactive defense mechanism by designing a resilient communication network. The proposed method quantifies the impact of attacks and develops a multiobjective optimization algorithm to design the network, considering quantified attacks, convergence, time-delay robustness, and communication costs. The method is validated through OPAL-RT simulations of an islanded microgrid with ten converters. ...
Conference paper (2024) - Junjie Xiao, Lu Wang, Pavol Bauer, Zian Qin
The communication network used in distributed sec-ondary control (DSC) for microgrid power and voltage regulation is vulnerable to cyber-attacks. Unlike the predominantly resilient research on secondary control, which tends to employ passive defense strategies, this paper presents a proactive defense mecha-nism to design a resilient network for microgrid secure operation. This proposed method involves preparing the resilient scheme before attacks occur and facilitates timely resilience during an attack. First, novel metrics are introduced to effectively quantify the impact of various cyber attacks. Then, a multiobjective optimization method is applied to design the communication graph considering the quantified attacks, convergence, time-delay robustness, and communication cost. Simulations are performed on a microgrid consisting of 10 inverter units under different scenarios to validate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology. ...
Journal article (2024) - Junjie Xiao, Lu Wang, Zian Qin, Pavol Bauer
Communication-based distributed secondary control is deemed necessary to restore the state of islanding AC microgrids to set points. As its limited global information, the microgrids become vulnerable to cyber-attacks, which by falsifying the communicating singles, like the angular frequency, can disturb the power dispatch in the microgrids or even induce blackout by pushing the microgrids beyond the safe operation area and triggering the protection. To make the microgrids more cyber secure, adaptive resilient control for the secondary frequency regulation is proposed. It assumes that each converter is communicating with its adjacent converters. With the proposed control, the weight of the communication channel being attacked is automatically reduced, and the more the communicating signals are falsified, the further the weight of that communication channel is weakened. The proposed approach does not rely on attack detection and thereby is easy to implement; Besides, it still works when challenged by a combination of multi-attack signals; Moreover, it applies to multiple communication lines getting attacked cases. Finally, the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed resilient control scheme are validated by both simulations and experimental results. ...
Conference paper (2024) - Junjie Xiao, Lu Wang, Pavol Bauer, Zian Qin
This paper concerns the control problem of the active caused by the mismatched impedance in resistive feeders-dominated microgrids. A distributed model predictive control (DMPC) scheme is suggested to regulate the virtual impedance of each involved unit. Moreover, the proposed method benefits resilience to communication failure by designing the communication matrix. Furthermore, it involves propagating information among units in a short period, significantly reducing the communication and computation burden. Finally, the performance of the proposed control scheme is evaluated in terms of its convergence, robustness to communication delay and load variations, resilience to communication failure, and plug-and-play functionality without communication in an inverter-connected system. ...
Journal article (2024) - Junjie Xiao, Lu Wang, Yihao Wan, Pavol Bauer, Zian Qin
This paper concerns the control problem of the active and harmonic power sharing caused by the mismatched impedance in resistive feeders-dominated microgrids. A distributed model predictive control (DMPC) scheme is suggested to regulate the virtual impedance of each involved unit for power sharing based on the neighbor's state. With the distributed philosophy, the central controller is not required. Moreover, the proposed method benefits resilience to communication failure by designing the communication matrix. Furthermore, it involves propagating information among units in a short period, significantly reducing the communication and computation burden. Finally, the performance of the proposed control scheme is evaluated in terms of its convergence, robustness to communication delay and load variations, resilience to communication failure, and plug-and-play functionality without communication in an inverter-connected system. ...
Journal article (2024) - L. Wang, J. Xiao, P. Bauer, Z. Qin
This article proposes an analytic approach to design the typical power factor correction (PFC) control of an electric vehicle (EV) charger to ensure small signal stability in weak grid conditions. Compared to the previous works, the proposed method considers the dynamics of all the control loops, i.e., phase-locked loop (PLL), voltage loop (VL), and current loop (CL). The impacts of key influential parameters on stability are analyzed. Furthermore, the upper limits of the PLL and VL bandwidth to ensure small signal stability are derived. Accordingly, the influences of the CL bandwidth, short circuit ratio (SCR), and the filter inductance on the upper limit of the PLL bandwidth and the VL bandwidth are quantified. Consequently, a design procedure that eliminates the need to model the input impedance for tuning the controller to prevent small signal instability is proposed. Simulations and experiments validate the analysis. ...
Conference paper (2023) - L. Wang, Z. Qin, J. Xiao, P. Bauer
The critical short circuit ratio (CSCR), as an important metric for grid stability evaluation, is not clearly defined in the literature. Aimed at clarifying the misunderstandings, the paper compares the different CSCR definitions. Moreover, CSCR reduction-oriented design is studied for electric vehicle chargers. Simulations verify the analysis. ...
Journal article (2023) - J. Xiao, L. Wang, P. Bauer, Z. Qin
Due to the mismatched feeder impedances in a resistive feeder AC microgrid, it's challenging to accurately share harmonic and active power while promising a low bus voltage distortion rate. To address this issue, this paper proposes a distributed philosophy-based virtual impedance modulation strategy. The proposed method regulates the fundamental and harmonic impedance at the desired value by exchanging information with its adjacent inverters. Notably, the proposed method benefits from resilience against communication delay, failure, and cyber-attacks. Moreover, it significantly reduces the communication burden. The proposed method's effectiveness is validated through experiments conducted in various cases, including different communication scenarios and plug-and-play operations. ...
Conference paper (2023) - Junjie Xiao, Lu Wang, Zian Qin, Pavol Bauer
In multi-inverter parallel connected islanded micro-grids, reactive power sharing is challenged by the differences in feeder impedance and various controller parameters. In order to address this issue, a virtual impedance reshaping strategy based on the consensus algorithm is proposed in this paper. The proposed method facilitates adaptive modulation of virtual impedance to ensure that it is consistent with the desired value. Notably, the method has the advantage of accurate reactive power sharing even in the presence of communication delays and interruptions. Furthermore, the proposed strategy exhibits resistance to malicious cyber-attacks by integrating an auxiliary controller that reconstructs the propagated information in the face of cyber threats that challenge the integrity of the original signal. Furthermore, this paper introduces an exit strategy that enables data exchange during the system construction phase and subsequently fixes the virtual impedance proportionally. This feature significantly reduces the communication burden. The effectiveness of the proposed control strategy is evaluated through several experimental cases, including accurate reactive power sharing and plug-and-play capability. ...
Conference paper (2023) - Junjie Xiao, Lu Wang, Zian Qin, Pavol Bauer
This paper proposes a virtual impedance reshaping strategy to share active and harmonic power while promoting the PCC voltage quality. Moreover, the suggested method is resilient to cyber-attacks and immune to communication interruption and delay. Furthermore, it significantly reduces the communication burden. Experiments verify the effectiveness. ...
Conference paper (2022) - Junjie Xiao, Lu Wang, Zian Qin, Pavol Bauer
Distributed secondary control is deemed necessary to restore the state of AC micro-grids to set points. However, for its limited global information, the power electronic system is vulnerable to cyber-attacks that aim to desynchronize converters or even cause a shutdown of micro-grids by unnecessarily triggering the protection schemes. To this end, an adaptive communication weight update for the secondary control layer is proposed. It guarantees frequency synchronization and active power sharing despite the presence of these attacks. Moreover, it automatically dispatches optimal communication lines when all its neighboring data are corrupted to different levels. Finally, the efficacy of the proposed resilient control method is demonstrated using simulations. ...
Conference paper (2022) - Junjie Xiao, Lu Wang, Zian Qin, Pavol Bauer
Smart grid steady control relies heavily on the communication infrastructure among sensors, actuators, and control systems, which makes it vulnerable to cyber-attacks. Accurate acquisition of dynamic state information is deemed vital for efficient detection of these cyber-attacks on a smart grid. However, several popular state estimation methods at the present stage are restricted in practical use and require some assumptions. In this paper, we investigate the security of smart grid systems. We (1) identify and define the security problem in the smart grid, (2) compare the performance of several state estimate methods including Least Square, Kalman filter, Extend Kalman filter, in identifying smart grid dynamic information using measurements, and (3) investigate the Chi-square detector, Euclidean Distance, and Cosine similarity matching approaches for attack detection. ...