The engine generator system with a diode rectifier causes harmonic currents in the generator which can affect generator efficiency and may produce torque oscillations. Using an active rectifier instead of a diode rectifier helps us to improve the current waveforms. In this paper, an active rectifier is used for a stand-alone gas engine generation system with a permanent magnet synchronous generator (PMSG). The generator side converter and the load side converter can be controlled separately to achieve high performance and reliability of the system. In the proposed control framework, the generator side converter is controlled by means of a current vector control method in a cascade structure with the synchronous reference frame (dq- frame). In the proposed control scheme, the dc link voltage is controlled by the generator side converter. For load side converter control, the concept of virtual synchronous generator control method is adopted to support a smooth power transient during the load changes. To verify the usefulness of the proposed control structure, using PSCAD software (version 4.2.1), the system transient responses with both a diode rectifier and an active rectifier are investigated under loading and load removal cases. Moreover, for the system with an active rectifier, the transient response of the system with different vector control strategies of PMSG is also investigated
