Electrical Power and Energy Systems 25 (2003) 525531

www.elsevier.com/locate/ijepes

Review

The DC link energy control method in dynamic voltage restorer system

Il-Yop Chung*, Dong-Jun Won, Sang-Young Park, Seung-Il Moon, Jong-Keun Park
Seoul National University, 130-Dong 303-Ho EESRI, Shinlim-dong, Kwanak-gu, Seoul 151-742, South Korea

Abstract
Dynamic voltage restorer (DVR), which is installed between the supply and a critical load, can restore the load voltage to the pre-fault
voltage during voltage sag. To restore load voltage, DVR should inject the equivalent of dropped voltage, which represents the voltage
difference between pre-fault and fault voltage through series connected transformer. Voltage restoration of DVR needs to inject active power
and energy from DVR to distribution system. However, the capability of energy storage that usually consists of capacitors in DVR is limited.
Therefore, it must be considered how the injection energy can be minimized and the load voltage can be made close to the pre-fault voltage.
This paper describes conventional restoration techniques like pre-sag compensation, in-phase compensation, and phase advance method. In
addition, this paper proposes a new concept of restoration technique to inject minimum energy during DVR compensation. The proposed
method is based on the definition of voltage tolerance of the load. In the proposed method, some particular disturbances can be corrected with
less amount of energy discharge than those of conventional methods.
q 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Power quality; Voltage sag; Custom power; Dynamic voltage restorer; Series compensation; Energy optimization

1. Introduction
Due to the development of industry, power quality has a
significant influence on high-technology equipments related
to communication, advanced control, automation, precise
manufacturing technique and on-line service. For example,
voltage sag can have a bad influence on the products of
semiconductor fabrication with considerable financial
losses. Power quality problems include transients, sags,
interruptions and other distortions to the sinusoidal waveform [1]. One of the most important power quality issues is
voltage sag that is a sudden short duration reduction in
voltage magnitude between 10 and 90% compared to
nominal voltage.
Recently, new technologies like custom power devices
based on power electronic concepts have been developed to
provide protection against power quality problems. Generally, custom power devices are divided by three categories
such as series-connected compensator like dynamic voltage
restorer (DVR), shunt-connected compensator like distribution static compensator (DSTATCOM), and series- and
shunt-connected compensator like Unified Power Quality
Conditioner (UPQC). The series-connected compensator
can restore the distorted load voltage directly by injecting
* Corresponding author. Tel.: 82-2-886-3101; fax: 82-2-886-3102.
E-mail address: iryop@powerlab.snu.ac.kr (I.-Y. Chung).

missing voltage while the shunt-connected compensator can

do indirectly by controlling line current. DVR is seriesconnected between the supply and a sensitive load, so that it
is designed to inject the compensating voltage into
distribution line in real time [2]. Therefore, DVR can
provide an effective solution to restore voltage sag by
establishing the proper voltage quality level required by
customer.
The ideal restoration is to make load voltages unchanged.
When DVR restores voltage disturbances, active power or
energy should be injected from DVR to distribution system.
If the capability of energy storage of DVR were infinite,
DVR could maintain load voltage unchanged ideally during
any kind of faults. However, the stored energy in DVR is
limited practically by the limit of DC link capacity of DVR.
Namely, DVR cannot restore the load voltage constantly
when the voltage across the DC link has gone down and
stored energy has run out eventually during deep voltage sag
with long duration. Therefore, it is necessary to minimize
energy injection from DVR.
There are several methods how to inject DVR mitigating
voltage to distribution system: pre-sag compensation, inphase compensation, and phase advance method [3 6]. In
this paper, each method is examined and new optimizing
method based on load voltage characteristics is proposed. In
addition, under some cases, the performances of the
methods are compared.

0142-0615/03/$ - see front matter q 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/S0142-0615(02)00179-5

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Fig. 1. Voltage divider model for voltage sag [7].

Fig. 3. Vector diagram of pre-sag compensation.

2. Basic principle of DVR

To quantify voltage sag in radial distribution system, the
voltage divider model, shown in Fig. 1, can be used on the
assumption that the fault current is much larger than the load
current during faults. The point of common coupling (PCC)
is the point from which both the fault and the load are fed.
Voltage sag is mostly unbalanced and accompanied by
phase angle jump [7].
From Fig. 1, the voltage at the PCC and phase angle jump
can be obtained by
ZF
ZF
Vsag
E
ZS ZF
Z S ZF





XF
XS XF

2 arctan
Df argVsag arctan
RF
RS RF

1
2

where ZS RS jXS is the source impedance at PCC, ZF

RF jXF is the impedance between the PCC and the
fault, and E 1 p:u: is the source voltage.
The DVR is able to compensate the voltage sag
especially at sensitive loads by injecting an appropriate
voltage through an injection transformer. As shown in Fig. 2,
DVR consists of high speed switching pulse width
modulation (PWM) inverter, DC energy storage unit, AC
harmonic filter and injection transformer [8]. In Fig. 2,
V S ; V L and V DVR are the during-fault supply voltage vector,
the restored load voltage vector, and the DVR injection
voltage vector, respectively.

Fig. 2. Typical schematic of DVR.

Basically, the ideal DVR injection voltage can be

obtained as
V DVR V Lprefault 2 V S

where V Lprefault is pre-fault load voltage vector.

3. Conventional DVR voltage injection methods

The possibility of compensating voltage sag can be
limited by a number of factors including finite DVR power
rating, different load conditions, and different types of
voltage sag. Some loads are very sensitive to phase angle
jump and others are tolerant to phase angle jump. Therefore,
the control strategy depends on the type of load characteristics [6]. There are three distinguishing methods to inject
DVR compensating voltage, that is, pre-sag compensation
method, in-phase compensation method, and phase advance
method.
Pre-sag compensation method is to track supply voltage
continuously and compensate load voltage during fault to
pre-fault condition. Fig. 3 shows the single-phase vector
diagram of the pre-sag compensation where VS ; VL ; VDVR ;
and VLprefault mean the magnitudes of the voltage vectors
that are explained in Fig. 2 and Eq. (3). In this method, the
load voltage can be restored ideally, but injected active
power cannot be controlled and is determined by external
conditions such as the type of faults and load condition.
In in-phase compensation shown in Fig. 4, the injected
DVR voltage is in phase with measured supply voltage
regardless of the load current and the pre-fault voltage. The
advantage of this method is that magnitude of injected DVR

Fig. 4. Vector diagram of in-phase compensation.

I.-Y. Chung et al. / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 25 (2003) 525531

voltage is minimized for constant load voltage magnitude.

The steady state injected active power is
PDVR 3VL 2 VS I cos f

Pre-sag compensation and in-phase compensation must

inject active power to loads almost all the time. However,
the amount of possible injection active power is confined to
the stored energy in DC link, which is one of the most
expensive components in DVR. Due to the limit of energy
storage capacity of DC link, the DVR restoration time and
performance are confined in these methods. For the sake of
controlling injection energy, phase advance method is
proposed [3 5].
The fundamental idea of energy optimization method is
to make injection active power zero by means of having the
injection voltage phasor perpendicular to the load current
phasor. This method can reduce the consumption of energy
stored in DC link by injecting reactive power instead of
active power. Reducing energy consumption means that
ride-through ability is increased when the energy storage
capacity is fixed.
On the other hand, the injection voltage magnitude of
phase advance method is larger than those of pre-sag or inphase method and the voltage phase shift can cause voltage
waveform discontinuity, inaccurate zero crossing, and load
power swing. Therefore, phase advance method should be
adjusted to the load that is tolerant to phase angle jump, or
transition period should be taken while phase angle is
moved from pre-fault angle to advance angle a:
To determine DVR injection voltage, there are two
assumptions that the loads are modeled as constant
impedance and three phase balanced loads. On these
assumptions, the load power factor f is constant in three
phases and the restored load voltages VL and phase
currents I are the same as each phase. Fig. 5 shows the
voltage and current vector diagram of phase advance
method.
In Fig. 5, j means each phase like a; b; and c; and VSj and
dj are the magnitude of supply voltage and phase angle jump

527

during fault. VSj and dj are determined by fault conditions,

so these values are usually different from each phase. VL ; I;
and f means the voltage, current, and power factor of the
load after restoration. VDVRj indicates the injection voltage
of DVR and a is called as the advance angle that is the
difference angle between the restored load voltage and prefault voltage.
If Pin ; Pout and PDVR are the input power from the supply,
the load power, and the injection power of DVR,
respectively, then power equations can be obtained as
follows.
X

Pin

VSj I cosf 2 a dj

;j

Pout

VL I cosf 3VL I cosf

;j

PDVR Pout 2 Pin

3VL I cosf 2

VSj I cosf 2 a dj

;j

In phase advance method, the magnitude of the restored

load voltage VL should be maintained as the pre-fault
voltage magnitude. Then, PDVR depends on only the
advance angle a when VSj and dj have been given by
fault conditions. The possible extreme case is that PDVR
goes below zero with some specific value a: The negative
PDVR gives no economical advantage because DVR
requires additional storage facility to cater for the power
absorption. Therefore, it is the best operating condition
that DVR injects zero active power, neither positive nor
negative active power.
The advance angle a of phase advance method can be
determined by the condition of making PDVR zero, but there
are some exceptive cases like deep voltage sag that PDVR
cannot be zero. During severe deep sag, the optimum a; that
makes PDVR minimized, can be calculated by solving
dPDVR =da 0:
The advance angle a can be calculated as follows. If the
supply voltage parameters satisfy the condition,
20
4@

12 0
VSj cosdj A @

;j

12 31=2
VSj sindj A 5 $ 3VL cosf

;j

8
then
0

B
C
3VL cosf
B
C
C
aopt f b 2 arccosB r



@ P
2
2A
P
VSj cos dj VSj sin dj
Fig. 5. Vector diagram of phase advance method.

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Fig. 8. Vector diagram of proposed method.

Fig. 6. Part of the complex plane protected by DVR with the indicated
voltage rating [7].

else

aopt f b

10
 P

where b arctan
;j VSj sindj =
;j VSj cosdj :
Inequality (8) means the level of voltage sag, deep sag or
shallow sag. Optimum a can be obtained by Eq. (9) during
shallow sag that can satisfy inequality (8) and by Eq. (10)
during deep sag that cannot satisfy inequality (8).
 P

4. Proposed method
As stated above, in order to minimize PDVR ; phase
advance method controls only the phase angle of the load
voltage. However, this method cannot make PDVR zero
during deep sag. This paper proposes the energy minimizing
method, named voltage tolerance method that controls not
only the phase angle but also the magnitude of the load
voltage based on voltage tolerance area of the load.

Fig. 7. Vector diagram of phase advance method.

The load can tolerate small voltage drop and some phase
angle jump, so that it operates normally in the voltage
tolerance area. It is not strictly necessary that the load
voltage should remain exactly at its pre-fault value.
Therefore, DVR should not compensate exactly the same
load voltage as pre-fault voltage and, on the other hand,
there are magnitude and phase angle margins in the voltage
tolerance area. The possible voltage tolerance area of DVR
compensation can be obtained as shown in Fig. 6 [7]. Since
load voltage can be located at any point in the voltage
tolerance area without trip of the load, the operating point
that makes injection active power optimized can be obtained
in the tolerance area.
The voltage tolerance area is load-dependent. Some
loads like ac motor drives are sensitive to voltage magnitude
variation and the others like power supplies are sensitive to
phase shift. Therefore, the researches of voltage tolerance
area have been done. Generally, the voltage variation that
does not make loads trip is 90 110% of voltage magnitude
in comparison with nominal-state voltage magnitude.

Fig. 9. Active power form DVR vs. two control parameters, load voltage
magnitude and phase angle.

I.-Y. Chung et al. / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 25 (2003) 525531

529

Fig. 10. Configuration of the test system.

In addition, tolerable phase angle variation is known as 5

10% from normal state.
Figs. 7 and 8 show the phasor diagrams of phase advance
method and the proposed method, respectively.
Fig. 7 shows that the load voltage phasor is located on the
circle whose radius is the magnitude of pre-fault voltage in
phase advance method. The magnitude of restored load
voltage is the same as pre-fault voltage, but the phase angle
precedes that of pre-fault voltage by advance angle a:
Fig. 8 shows the possible location of the load voltage
phasor in the proposed method. The load voltage is located
in the tolerance area where loads do not suffer voltage
problems. The equation of three-phase active power
obtained from Fig. 8 is the same as Eq. (7). However, in
this method, control parameters are both advance angle a
and magnitude VL ; not a only. The relationship between
PDVR and two control parameters is illustrated in Fig. 9.
The process of obtaining two-control parameters a and
VL is as follows. a and VL should satisfy Eq. (11) in order to
make PDVR zero. Furthermore, a and VL should be located
in the voltage tolerance area so that inequality constraints
are like Eq. (12).
X
3VL I cosf 2
VSj I cosf 2 a dj 0
11
;j

Vmin # VL # Vmax

12

amin # a # amax
To obtain unique solution from Eq. (11) within constraints
(12), the objective function like (13) is needed. The
minimization of this function means to minimize the
variation of restored load voltage magnitude with respect
to pre-fault voltage magnitude.
J Vprefault 2 VL 2

13

5. Case study
To verify the efficiency of above-mentioned control
methods, the test system shown in Fig. 10 is modeled with
EMTDC/PSCAD package that is usually used for power
system dynamic simulations. DVR is located in one feeder
and line-to-ground fault is adjusted in another feeder. The
voltage magnitude of the feeder on that DVR is located can
be controlled by fault distance.
As mentioned before, lots of loads have voltage tolerance
for magnitude and angle jump. In this paper, two hypothetic
cases are considered. One has relatively strict boundary of
restored voltage variation and the other has relatively
relaxed boundary.
At first, in the relatively strict case, the boundary of
voltage magnitude tolerance is from 0.98 to 1.02 p.u. and
the boundary of phase angle jump is from 2 30 to 308. This
range can be regarded as strict compared that the definition
of voltage sag in IEEE 1159 is a sudden reduction between
10 and 90%.
In this case, two faults, deep sag and shallow sag, are
executed. Table 1 shows the parameters of the source
Table 2
The results of control method for 41.3% voltage sag

Table 1
Voltages and currents at 41.3% voltage sag in phase a
VLprefault 18:38 kV
VSa 10:79 kV
VSb 17:82 kV
VSc 22:02 kV
Power angle 23.518

This function J means that the maintenance of magnitude is

more important than that of phase angle of load voltage
because the magnitude of load voltage is more related with
steady state load power than phase advance angle.
To sum up the proposed method, the solution of the
proposed method can be obtained from the objective
function (13) with the inequality constraints (12) and
equality constraints (11). Therefore, the proposed method
can inject little active power and maintain load voltage in
the tolerance area especially with little change of voltage
magnitude. In this paper, the solution was obtained by using
simulation packages like MATLAB and GAMS.

I 0:01076 kA
da 215:2708
db 211:7008
dc 2:6008

Pre-sag compensation
Phase advance method
Proposed method

a (deg)

VL (p.u.)

PDVR (kW)

0
17.2641
17.2460

1.0
1.0
0.994

14.4
2.2
0.568

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I.-Y. Chung et al. / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 25 (2003) 525531

Table 3
Voltages and currents at 15.83% voltage sag in phase a
VLprefault 18:38 kV
VSa 15:47 kV
VSb 18:79 kV
VSc 19:98 kV
Power angle 23:518

I 0:01076 kA
da 210:7808
db 25:8538
dc 3:3108

Table 4
The results of control method for 15.83% voltage sag

Pre-sag compensation
Phase advance method
Proposed method

a (deg)

VL (p.u.)

PDVR (kW)

0
1.03
1.03

1.0
1.0
1.0

21.400
0.388
0.388

voltages and currents during 41.3% single-phase voltage

sag, which is so deep that inequality (8) cannot be satisfied.
Table 2 shows results of simulation with conventional
methods and the proposed method. Pre-sag compensation
can restore the load voltage ideally but the injection active
power of DVR is 14.4 kW. Phase advance method can
reduce the injection active power to 2.2 kW, as the load
voltage magnitude is not changed from pre-sag. Deep sag
cannot satisfy the inequality (8), so that injection power
cannot be reduced more only by the selection of phase
advance angle.
The injection power of the proposed method is 0.568 kW
lower than those of any other conventional method. The
variation of voltage magnitude and phase angle can satisfy
the voltage tolerance.
Table 3 shows the parameters of the source voltage and
currents during 15.83% single-phase voltage sag that is
relatively shallow sag. In phase advance method and the
proposed method, the injection active power can be nearly
zero because this sag condition satisfies the inequality (8).
The results are listed in Table 4. Pre-sag compensation
injected 2 1.4 kW, but negative active power needs extra
devices for power absorption. Phase advance method and
Table 5
Voltages and currents at 59.74% voltage sag in phase a
VLprefault 18:38 kV
VSa 7:40 kV
VSb 16:30 kV
VSc 23:32 kV
Power angle 23:518

I 0:01076 kA
da 21:4708
db 214:6308
dc 20:7048

Table 6
The results of control method for 59.74% voltage sag

Pre-sag compensation
Phase advance method
Proposed method

a (deg)

VL (p.u.)

PDVR (kW)

0.0
17.8669
17.8763

1.0
1.0
0.925

32.8
20.7
0.312

the proposed method can make PDVR nearly zero. The

control parameters and PDVR of the proposed method are
the same as those of phase advance method because
maintaining load voltage magnitude has the priority over
maintaining phase angle in the proposed method. Therefore, when it is sufficient to make PDVR zero by
controlling only advance angle a; the same results are
obtained in both methods.
Now let us consider the latter relaxed case. The
boundary of voltage magnitude tolerance is from 0.90 to
1.10 p.u., and that of phase angle tolerance is from 2 30
to 308. The 59.74% single-phase sag is executed as listed
in Table 5 and the results are listed in Table 6. This case
conforms that more the voltage magnitude tolerance is
admitted, the better does the proposed method optimize
PDVR during deep sag.

6. Conclusion
Generally almost all loads in distribution system have
voltage tolerance although their tolerance ranges are
different. On the other hand, DVR has the limit of capability
of injecting active power. The phase advance method to
optimizing injection active power uses only phase angle of
load voltage as a control parameter. But when deep voltage
sag happens, phase advance method has limits to optimizing
injected active power. The main idea of this paper is to use
not only phase angle but also magnitude of load voltage in
the voltage tolerance area in order to optimize injection
active power of DVR. This paper also proposed objective
function, equality constraints, and inequality constraints in
order to obtain control parameter. Under several cases, the
proposed method has a merit to optimizing injected active
power compared with conventional method especially
during deep sag.

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I.-Y. Chung et al. / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 25 (2003) 525531

Il-Yop Chung received his BS and MS degrees in Electrical

Engineering at Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea in 1999 and
2001, respectively. He is currently a PhD student at the Seoul National
University.

531

Seung-Il Moon received the BS from the Seoul National University,

Korea, in 1985 and MS and PhD degrees from The Ohio State
University in 1989 and 1993, respectively. Currently, he is an Associate
Professor of School of Electrical Engineering at Seoul National
University, Korea. His research interests include the analysis, control
and modeling of the power system, FACTS and Custom Power.

Dong-Jun Won received his BS and MS degrees in Electrical

Engineering at the Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea, in 1998
and 2000, respectively. He is currently a PhD student at the Seoul
National University.

Sang-Young Park received his BS, MS, and PhD degrees in Electrical
Engineering at the Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea, in 1989,
1991, and 2001, respectively. He currently works for EO Technics.

Jong-Keun Park received his BS from the Seoul National University,

Korea, in 1973 and MS and PhD degrees from the University of Tokyo,
Japan, in 1979 and 1982, respectively. Currently he is a Professor of
School of Electrical Engineering at the Seoul National University,
Korea.