Webinar: Grid-Forming Control for Power System Oscillation Damping: Insights from Angle Stability before the Iberian Blackout of 2025
April 22, 2026 @ 11:00 am – 12:00 pm
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Featured Speaker: Dr. Lijun Cai, Professor and Chair of Electrical Power Systems, University of Rostock
Moderator: Debbie Lew, Executive Director, ESIG
Webinar Abstract: The rapid growth of inverter-based renewable generation is fundamentally changing power system dynamics and creating new challenges for system stability and secure operation. On April 28, 2025, the Spanish and Portuguese power systems were disconnected from continental Europe, providing a critical real-world case for examining these challenges.
This work combines system-level disturbance analysis with control-oriented studies to assess the role of grid-forming (GFM) renewable generation in providing effective damping to the system oscillations. The analysis of the Iberian power system prior to the blackout reveals increasing local and inter-area oscillations, rising tie-line stress, and reduced damping margins. In addition, the generation performance following the blackout is investigated to evaluate system behavior under stressed and recovery conditions.
Complementary studies on virtual synchronous generator (VSG) control demonstrate that GFM-controls actively participate in the oscillations and can provide stabilizing effects comparable to, or even exceeding, those of conventional synchronous generators, particularly when traditional power system stabilizers (PSS) are unavailable.
The results indicate that GFM control can serve as a practical and scalable stability resource for future power systems. For utilities, the findings support integrating GFM-based damping services into grid codes, operational planning, and dynamic security assessment. Furthermore, coordinated deployment of GFM control, damping-oriented controller tuning, and enhanced blackstart and restoration strategies are identified as key measures to ensure secure and resilient operation of future renewable-dominated power systems.
About the Speaker: Since 2018, Dr. Lijun Cai has been a Professor and Chair of Electrical Power Systems at the University of Rostock, Germany. His current research interests include large-scale power system stability analysis and control, renewable energy integration, HVDC system design (LCC and VSC), and large-scale energy storage technologies.
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