A non‐singular fast terminal sliding mode control scheme for residual current compensation inverters in compensated distribution networks to mitigate powerline bushfires

This paper presents an approach to design a non‐singular fast terminal sliding model controller for residual current compensation inverters in compensated distribution networks to compensate the fault current due to most commonly occurred single line‐to‐ground faults. The main control objective is to completely eliminate the fault current in order to mitigate the impacts of powerline bushfires. A non‐singular fast terminal sliding surface is used to design the controller so that the residual current compensation inverter can quickly ensure the desired control performance without experiencing singularity problems. In this scheme, the chattering effects are minimised by replacing the discontinuous function appearing in the control law with a continuous function and the Lyapunov stability theory is utilised to demonstrate the theoretical stability of the control law. This paper also includes an overview of the non‐singular terminal sliding model controller as the performance of the non‐singular fast terminal sliding model controller is compared with this controller through rigorous simulation results over a range of fault currents. Simulation results clearly demonstrate the faster convergence speed of the non‐singular fast terminal sliding model controller over the non‐singular terminal sliding model controller for compensating the fault current and hence, mitigating powerline bushfires.