DC microgrids are getting more and more applications due to simple converters, only voltage control and higher efficiencies compared to conventional AC grids. Droop control is a well know decentralized control strategy for power sharing among converter interfaced sources and loads in a DC microgrid. This work compares the stability assessment and control of four types of droops for boost converters using the concept of passivity. EN standard 50388-2 for railway systems provides a reference to ensure system stability in perspectives of converters and system integration. Low pass filter (LPF) in the feedback of the droop control is used to ensure converter passivity. Bus impedance is derived to ensure system passivity with less conservativeness. Analytical approach for design of passive controller for all four types of droops is verified through time domain simulations of a single boost converter based microgrid feeding a Constant Power Load (CPL).
An islanded microgrid supplied by multiple distributed energy resources (DERs) often employs droop-control mechanisms for power sharing. Because microgrids do not include inertial elements, and low pass filtering of noisy measurements introduces lags in control, droop-like controllers may pose significant stability concerns. This paper aims to understand the effects of droop-control on the small-signal stability and transient response of the microgrid. Towards this goal, we present a compendium of results on the small-signal stability of droop-controlled inverter-based microgrids with heteroge…
The presence of constant power loads (CPLs) in dc shipboard microgrids may lead to unstable conditions. The present work investigates the stability properties of dc microgrids where CPLs are fed by fuel cells (FCs), and energy storage systems (ESSs) equipped with voltage droop control. With respect to the previous literature, the dynamics of the duty cycles of the dc-dc converters implementing the droop regulation are considered. A mathematical model has been derived, and tuned to best mimic the behavior of the electrical representation implemented in DIgSILENT. Then the model is used to find …
The connection of single-phase microgrids (MG) and loads to three-phase MGs creates power quality problems such as unbalanced voltage and voltage rise at the point of common coupling (PCC) of the MGs. In this paper, a modified reverse droop control (MRDC) scheme in the Energy Storage System (ESS) is proposed to improve the three-phase PCC voltage quality in multi-microgrids (MMG). The MRDC consists of a reactive power compensator (RPC) and a voltage compensator. The controller regulates the reactive power and voltage unbalance of the MMG by using the reactive power produced by the ESS. The eff…
In this paper, we propose a novel four-stage distributed controller for a DC microgrid that achieves power sharing and average voltage regulation for the voltages at actuated and unactuated buses. The controller is presented for a DC microgrid comprising multiple distributed generating units (DGUs) with time-varying actuation states; dynamic RLC lines; nonlinear constant impedance, current and power (ZIP) loads and a time-varying network topology. The controller comprising a nonlinear gain, PI controllers, and two dynamic distributed averaging stages is designed for asymptotic stability. This …
High penetration of renewable generation poses great challenge to power system operation due to its uncertain nature. In droop-controlled microgrids, the voltage volatility induced by renewable uncertainties is aggravated by the high droop gains. This paper proposes a chance-constrained optimal power flow (CC-OPF) problem with power flow routers (PFRs) to better regulate the voltage profile in microgrids. PFR refer to a general type of network-side controller that brings more flexibility to the power network. Comparing with the normal CC-OPF that relies on power injection flexibility only, the…
In this paper, we propose a minimax model predictive control (MPC)-based energy management system that is robust with respect to uncertainties in renewable infeed and load. The MPC formulation includes a model of low-level droop control with saturation at the power and energy limits of the units. Robust MPC-based energy management systems tend to under-utilize the renewable energy sources to guarantee safe operation. In order to mitigate this effect, we further consider droop control of renewable energy sources. For a microgrid with droop-controlled units, we show that enhancing droop feedback…
We present a full review of PID passivity-based controllers (PBC) applied to power electronic converters, discussing limitations, unprecedented merits and potential improvements in terms of large-signal stability, robustness and performance. We provide four main contributions. The nominal case is first considered and it is shown, under the assumption of perfect knowledge of the system parameters, that the PID-PBC is able to guarantee global exponential stability of a desired operating point for any positive gains. Second, we analyze robustness of the controller to parameters uncertainty for a …
An enhanced microgrid power flow (EMPF) is devised to incorporate hierarchical control effects. The new contributions are threefold: 1) an advanced-hierarchical-control-based Newton approach is established to accurately assess power sharing and voltage regulation effects; 2) a modified Jacobian matrix is derived to incorporate droop control and various secondary control modes; and 3) the secondary adjustment is calculated on top of the droop-control-based power flow results to ensure a robust Newton solution. Case studies validate that EMPF is efficacious and efficient and can serve as a power…
A microgrid is a new concept that has changed the power systems dramatically. It is a combination of Distributed Generation Resources (DGR) like Biomass, PV systems, Wind energy, Fuel cell, Diesel Generator, and so on with different types of loads (residential or commercial). Microgrids can work in two modes: autonomous and Interconnected. In the Islanding situation, the loads will be supported by DGR and without connecting to upstream utility grids. Controlling power electronic Interfaces between sources and loads has been an important task between the researchers. Several different strategie…
Voltage and frequency control in an islanded AC microgrid (ImGs) amount to stabilizing an a priori unknown ImG equilibrium induced by loads and changes in topology. This paper puts forth a unified control framework which, while guaranteeing such stability, allows for modular ImGs interconnecting multiple subsystems, that is, dynamic RLC lines, nonlinear constant impedance, current, power (ZIP) and exponential (EXP) loads, and inverter-based distributed generation units (DGUs) controlled with different types of primary controllers. The underlying idea of the framework is based one equilibrium-i…
The complexity arising in AC microgrids from multiple interacting distributed generation units (DGUs) with intermittent supply behavior requires local voltage-source inverters (VSIs) to be controlled in a distributed or decentralized manner at primary level. In (Strehle et al., 2019), we use passivity theory to design decentralized, plug-and-play voltage and frequency controllers for such VSIs. However, the stability analysis of the closed-loop system requires a load-connected topology, in contrast to real grids where loads are arbitrarily located. In this paper, we expand our former approach …
A new method for the stability assessment of inverter-based microgrids is presented in this paper. Directly determining stability boundaries by searching the multidimensional space of inverters' droop gains is a computationally prohibitive task. Instead, we build a certified stability region by utilizing a generalized Laplacian matrix eigenvalues, which are a measure of proximity to stability boundary. We establish an upper threshold for the eigenvalues that determines the stability boundary of the entire system and demonstrate that this value depends only on the network's R/X ratio but does n…
Advanced microgrids consisting of distributed energy resources interfaced with multi-inverter systems are becoming more common. Consequently, the effectiveness of voltage and frequency regulation in microgrids using conventional droop-based methodologies is challenged by uncertainty in the sizeand schedule of loads. This article proposes an isochronous architecture of parallel inverters with only voltage-active power droop (VP-D) control for improving active power sharing as well as plug-and-play of multi-inverter based distributed energyresources (DERs). In spite of not employing explicit con…
As a new type of microgrid structure, AC-DC hybrid microgrid can efficiently consume new energy distributed generator based on photovoltaics, which is very suitable for microgrid systems with electric vehicles as the main load. Unlike the AC microgrid, the DC bus of the AC-DC hybrid microgrid is a low-inertia system. How to improve the DC bus inertia of the AC-DC hybrid microgrid system and the stability of the DC bus voltage become particularly important. Based on this, this paper presents a method for flexible control strategy of microgrid bus voltage based on multi-node droop. By considerin…
Passivity theory has recently contributed to developing decentralized control schemes for large-scale systems. Many decentralized passivity-based control schemes are designed in continuous-time. It is well-known, however, that the passivity properties of continuous-time systems may be lost under discretization. In this work, we present a novel stabilizing decentralized control scheme by ensuring passivity for discrete-time systems directly and thus avoiding the issue of passivity preservation. The controller is synthesized by locally solving a semidefinite program offline for each subsystem in…
The proliferation of inverter-based generation and advanced sensing, controls, and communication infrastructure have facilitated the accelerated deployment of microgrids. A coordinated network of microgrids can maintain reliable power delivery to critical facilities during extreme events. Low inertia offered by the power electronics interfaced energy resources however, can present significant challenges to ensuring stable operation of the microgrids. In this work, distributed small-signal stability conditions for inverter-based microgrids are developed that involve the droop controller paramet…
The need to restore and keep the grid running or fast restoration during emergencies such as extreme weather conditions is quite apparent given the reliance of other infrastructure on electricity. One promising approach to electricity restoration is the use of locally available energy resources to restore the system to form isolated microgrids. In this paper, we present a black start restoration method that forms islanded microgrids after a blackout. The master DGs in the formed microgrids are coordinated to work together through droop control. Several constraints, including incentive-based de…
With the increasing penetration of converter-interfaced distributed generation systems, it would be advantageous to specify local compliance criteria for these devices to ensure the small-signal stability of the interconnected system. Passivity of the device admittance, which is an example of a local criterion, has been used previously to avoid resonances between these devices and the lightly damped oscillatory modes of the network. Typical active and reactive power control strategies like droop control and virtual synchronous generator control inherently violate the passivity constraints on a…
Solar and Fuel cell energy resources are two major of Renewable Energy Resources (RES) which is using to power electrical grids. They can provide clean energy and help to reduce greenhouse emissions. RES is changing the structure of electrical systems day by day. They have provided to supply the loads and have distributed systems. The concept of Microgrid has been defined by connecting distributed generation sources and load which can run in islanding and interconnected modes. In this research, solar and fuel cell are used as a source for providing variable loads. They try to deliver defined p…
A new method for stability assessment of inverter-based microgrids is presented in this paper. It leverages the notion of critical clusters -- a localized group of inverters with parameters having the highest impact on the system stability. The spectrum of the weighted network admittance matrix is proposed to decompose a system into clusters and rank them based on their distances from the stability boundary. We show that each distinct eigenvalue of this matrix is associated with one cluster, and its eigenvectors reveal a set of inverters that participate most in the corresponding cluster. The …
This project discusses the control schemes for distribution grids with a large amount of wind penetration. Microgrids are constantly gaining popularity, especially in the countries, where there is energy crisis. Various systems, including synchronous generators, grid and loads, have been investigated in this project. Major focus is placed on active and reactive power sharing. Droop control for multiple synchronous generators is explored. The phenomenon of load transients has also been reviewed and associated simulations have been carried out on SimPower Systems. Constant wind power has been in…
