Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJanuary 20, 2026
Decision Letter - Jiapeng Liu, Editor

-->PONE-D-26-03199-->-->An improved control strategy of power-frequency characteristics of virtual synchronous generator-->-->PLOS One

Dear Dr. Gao,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

==============================

ACADEMIC EDITOR: The readability of the paper needs to be further improved, the quality of the figures should be enhanced, and the descriptions of some terms should be kept consistent.

==============================

Please submit your revised manuscript by Apr 24 2026 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:-->

  • A letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
  • A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
  • An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Jiapeng Liu, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS One

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When you resubmit, please ensure that you provide the correct grant numbers for the awards you received for your study in the ‘Funding Information’ section.

4. Thank you for stating the following financial disclosure:

“This study was funded by science and technology project of Liaoning Electric Power Co., Ltd. “Research on optimal control method of power frequency active support capability of PV virtual synchronous power supply (2025YF-34).”

Please state what role the funders took in the study.  If the funders had no role, please state: "The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript."

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“This study was funded by science and technology project of Liaoning Electric Power Co., Ltd. “Research on optimal control method of power frequency active support capability of PV virtual synchronous power supply (2025YF-34).”

We note that you received funding from a commercial source: Liaoning Electric Power Co., Ltd

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Please include your amended Competing Interests Statement within your cover letter. We will change the online submission form on your behalf.

7. We note that one or more of the authors are employed by a commercial company: Yingkou Power Supply Company

1. Please provide an amended Funding Statement declaring this commercial affiliation, as well as a statement regarding the Role of Funders in your study. If the funding organization did not play a role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript and only provided financial support in the form of authors' salaries and/or research materials, please review your statements relating to the author contributions, and ensure you have specifically and accurately indicated the role(s) that these authors had in your study. You can update author roles in the Author Contributions section of the online submission form.

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Within your Competing Interests Statement, please confirm that this commercial affiliation does not alter your adherence to all PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials by including the following statement: "This does not alter our adherence to  PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.” (as detailed online in our guide for authors http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/competing-interests) . If this adherence statement is not accurate and  there are restrictions on sharing of data and/or materials, please state these. Please note that we cannot proceed with consideration of your article until this information has been declared.

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10. If the reviewer comments include a recommendation to cite specific previously published works, please review and evaluate these publications to determine whether they are relevant and should be cited. There is no requirement to cite these works unless the editor has indicated otherwise.

Additional Editor Comments:

The paper needs to be strengthened in the following aspects:

1. The paper should provide the tuning method of control parameters. From the perspective of controller design, the proposed method relies too heavily on the model. When the model parameter identification is inaccurate, can the effectiveness of the algorithm be guaranteed?

2. The stability analysis needs to be supplemented. According to the experimental data, obvious chattering appears in the control error. What is the cause of this phenomenon?

3. lease supplement the diagrams of experimental equipment and describe the experimental setup in detail.

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

-->Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. -->

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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-->2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? -->

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

-->3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.-->

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

-->4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.-->

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

-->5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)-->

Reviewer #1: This paper proposes an improved control strategy for VSG to address the regulation contradiction between virtual inertia and damping. The topic is interesting. However, the contributions of this work appear to lack novelty. The reviewer offers the following comments for consideration:

1. In the introduction, some relevant studies on power oscillation damping methods for VSGs from the last five years are missing. For instance, virtual impedance control, additional damping control, and mutual damping control can also reduce control overshoots without affecting steady-state performance.

2. The analysis in grid-connected mode assumes a strong grid with infinite capacity ( ωg = ω0 ). In practical applications, grid strength may vary and can affect the system's dynamic response. The authors are encouraged to analyze and evaluate the robustness of the proposed control strategy under varying grid strength conditions.

3. The manuscript only considers a single VSG. It would be valuable to investigate the performance and scalability of the proposed control strategy when applied to systems with multiple VSGs operating in parallel.

4. The superiority of the proposed control method requires further validation. Specifically, its performance should be compared with state-of-the-art power oscillation damping methods to demonstrate its advantages, at least by providing a comparative analysis with existing adaptive methods (e.g., VSG with adaptively tuned J and D).

Reviewer #2: The author proposed a method to supress power oscillation of virtual synchronous generator (VSG) in the transition process. The mathematical model of VSG, control algorithm and closed-loop transfer function of active power to frequency fluctuation are developed. The simulation results show that the proposed method is good to supress the power oscillation.

Hence, this manuscript can be accepted.

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-->6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.-->

Reviewer #1: Yes: Zhengrong Xiang

Reviewer #2: Yes: VIJAYAN VELAPPAN

**********

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

To ensure your figures meet our technical requirements, please review our figure guidelines: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/figures

You may also use PLOS’s free figure tool, NAAS, to help you prepare publication quality figures: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/figures#loc-tools-for-figure-preparation.

NAAS will assess whether your figures meet our technical requirements by comparing each figure against our figure specifications.

Revision 1

Thanks to the valuable suggestions from the editor and reviewers, the author has made revisions to the manuscript according to the reviewers' comments.

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: point-by-point response.doc
Decision Letter - Jiapeng Liu, Editor

-->PONE-D-26-03199R1-->-->An improved control strategy of power-frequency characteristics of virtual synchronous generator-->-->PLOS One

Dear Dr. Gao,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

==============================

ACADEMIC EDITOR: The readability of the manuscript needs to be further improved to enhance its appeal.-->-->==============================

Please submit your revised manuscript by May 30 2026 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:-->

  • A letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
  • A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
  • An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

-->

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

As the corresponding author, your ORCID iD is verified in the submission system and will appear in the published article. PLOS supports the use of ORCID, and we encourage all coauthors to register for an ORCID iD and use it as well. Please encourage your coauthors to verify their ORCID iD within the submission system before final acceptance, as unverified ORCID iDs will not appear in the published article. Only the individual author can complete the verification step; PLOS staff cannot verify ORCID iDs on behalf of authors.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Jiapeng Liu, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS One

Journal Requirements:

If the reviewer comments include a recommendation to cite specific previously published works, please review and evaluate these publications to determine whether they are relevant and should be cited. There is no requirement to cite these works unless the editor has indicated otherwise.

Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

Additional Editor Comments:

The paper still has certain deficiencies in the analysis of research status and the description of experimental equipment. It is suggested to supplement the analysis of research status in the past three years and provide a detailed introduction to the experimental equipment.

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

-->Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.-->

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

**********

-->2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. -->

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

-->3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? -->

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

-->4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.-->

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

-->5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.-->

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

-->6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)-->

Reviewer #1: All my concerns have been addressed satisfactorily.

Thus, this paper can be acceptable.

Reviewer #2: The authors made sufficient corrections as per the reviewer comments in this revised manuscript. Hence, it can be accepted.

**********

-->7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.-->

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: VIJAYAN VELAPPAN

**********

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

To ensure your figures meet our technical requirements, please review our figure guidelines: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/figures

You may also use PLOS’s free figure tool, NAAS, to help you prepare publication quality figures: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/figures#loc-tools-for-figure-preparation.

NAAS will assess whether your figures meet our technical requirements by comparing each figure against our figure specifications.

-->

Revision 2

Dear Editors:

Thank you for your comments concerning our manuscript entitled “An improved control strategy of power-frequency characteristics of virtual synchronous generator”. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. The correction in the paper and the responds to your comments are as following:

Responds to the comments:

Academic editor Comments:

The readability of the manuscript needs to be further improved to enhance its appeal.

Author Response:

According to the editor's requirement, the author polished the entire manuscript to enhance its readability. The revised content can be found in the blue fields of the revised manuscript.

Additional Editor Comments:

The paper still has certain deficiencies in the analysis of research status and the description of experimental equipment. It is suggested to supplement the analysis of research status in the past three years and provide a detailed introduction to the experimental equipment.

Author Response:

In the revised manuscript, the author updated and replaced references 1, 5, 7, and added references 18, 21, 29, 30, 31. In the introduction, the author also conducted supplementary analysis of the research status in the past three years. The modified and supplementary content can be found in the red fields of the introduction and references.

According to the editor's requirement, the author provides additional descriptions of the experimental equipment in the revised manuscript. The supplementary content can be found in the red fields of "Experiment verification".

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Response to the reviewer.doc
Decision Letter - Jiapeng Liu, Editor

An improved control strategy of power-frequency characteristics of virtual synchronous generator

PONE-D-26-03199R2

Dear Dr. Gao,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

Jiapeng Liu, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS One

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Jiapeng Liu, Editor

PONE-D-26-03199R2

PLOS One

Dear Dr. Gao,

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Kind regards,

PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff

on behalf of

Dr. Jiapeng Liu

Academic Editor

PLOS One

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