Designing a Control Library for Grid-following and Grid-forming Power Converters

As a result of the energy transition, more and more power converters will be required in the future, which will lead to distributed energy generation across all voltage levels. Amongst others, these power converters take on tasks, such forming a grid or being capable of black starting. In order to be able to answer new research tasks, rapid control prototyping (RCP) systems are required, which must be flexibly programmable and configurable as laboratory devices. The RCP system offers great potential for fast and targeted laboratory validation of control algorithms and supports this with a user-friendly development platform for algorithm development. In order to simplify the programming of these RCP systems for the user, a software library is needed, which combines common building blocks for grid-following and grid-forming control algorithms. This software library enables the rapid development of new control algorithms for power converters, providing the user with tools for modeling, simulation and deployment of these control algorithms on a RCP system. This paper presents the development and verification of this software library, introduces the RICOSO system and presents aspects of the soft-and firmware design.