• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.1152-1162
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• 2016

The unequal impedances of the interconnecting cables between paralleled inverters in the island mode of microgrids cause inaccurate reactive power sharing when the traditional droop control is used. Many studies in the literature adopt low speed communications between the inverters and the central control unit to overcome this problem. However, the losses of this communication link can be very detrimental to the performance of the controller. This paper proposes an improved reactive power-sharing control method. It employs infrequent measurements of the voltage at the point of common coupling (PCC) to estimate the output impedance between the inverters and the PCC and then readjust the voltage droop controller gains accordingly. The controller then reverts to being a traditional droop controller using the newly calculated gains. This increases the immunity of the controller against any losses in the communication links between the central control unit and the inverters. The capability of the proposed control method has been demonstrated by simulation and experimental results using a laboratory scale microgrid.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.329-339
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• 2016

Owing to mismatched feeder impedances in an islanded microgrid, the conventional droop control method typically results in errors in reactive power sharing among distributed generation (DG) units. In this study, an improved droop control strategy based on secondary voltage control is proposed to enhance the reactive power sharing accuracy in an islanded microgrid. In a DG local controller, an integral term is introduced into the voltage droop function, in which the voltage compensation signal from the secondary voltage control is utilized as the common reactive power reference for each DG unit. Therefore, accurate reactive power sharing can be realized without any power information exchange among DG units or between DG units and the central controller. Meanwhile, the voltage deviation in the microgrid common bus is removed. Communication in the proposed strategy is simple to implement because the information of the voltage compensation signal is broadcasted from the central controller to each DG unit. The reactive power sharing accuracy is also not sensitive to time-delay mismatch in the communication channels. Simulation and experimental results are provided to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.234-243
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• 2019

Studying the control strategy of a microgrid under the load unbalanced state helps to improve the stability of the system. The magnitude of the power fluctuation, which occurs between the power supply and the load, is generated in a microgrid under the load unbalanced state is called negative sequence reactive power $Q^-$. Traditional power distribution methods such as P-f, Q-E droop control can only distribute power with positive sequence current information. However, they have no effect on $Q^-$ with negative sequence current information. In this paper, a stationary-frame control method for power sharing and voltage unbalance compensation in islanded microgrids is proposed. This method is based on the proper output impedance control of distributed generation unit (DG unit) interface converters. The control system of a DG unit mainly consists of an active-power-frequency and reactive-power-voltage droop controller, an output impedance controller, and voltage and current controllers. The proposed method allows for the sharing of imbalance current among the DG unit and it can compensate voltage unbalance at the same time. The design approach of the control system is discussed in detail. Simulation and experimental results are presented. These results demonstrate that the proposed method is effective in the compensation of voltage unbalance and the power distribution.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.234-250
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• 2018

This paper presents a new load sharing control for use between paralleled three-phase inverters in an islanded microgrid based on the online line impedance estimation by the use of a Kalman filter. In this study, the mismatch of power sharing when the line impedance changes due to temperature, frequency, significant differences in line parameters and the requirements of the Plug-and-Play mode for inverters connected to a microgrid has been solved. In addition, this paper also presents a new droop control method working with the line impedance that is different from the traditional droop algorithm when the line impedance is assumed to be pure resistance or pure inductance. In this paper, the line impedance estimation for parallel inverters uses the minimum square method combined with a Kalman filter. In addition, the secondary control loops are designed to restore the voltage amplitude and frequency of a microgrid by using a combined nominal value SOGI-PLL with a generalized integral block and phase lock loop to monitor the exact voltage magnitude and frequency phase at the PCC. A control model has been simulated in Matlab/Simulink with three voltage source inverters connected in parallel for different ratios of power sharing. The simulation results demonstrate the accuracy of the proposed control method.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.294-304
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• 2017

This paper proposes a point of common coupling (PCC) voltage compensation method for islanding microgrids using an improved power sharing control scheme among distributed generators (DGs) without communication. The PCC voltage compensation algorithm is implemented in the droop control scheme to reduce the PCC voltage deviation produced by the droop controller itself and the voltage drop on the line impedance. The control scheme of each individual DG unit is designed to use only locally measured feedback variables and an obtained line impedance to calculate the PCC voltage. Therefore, traditional voltage measurement devices installed at the PCC as well as communication between the PCC and the DGs are not required. The proposed control scheme can maintain the PCC voltage amplitude within an allowed range even to some extent assuming inaccurate line impedance parameters. In addition, it can achieve proper power sharing in islanding microgrids. Experimental results obtained under accurate and inaccurate line impedances are presented to show the performance of the proposed control scheme in islanding microgrids.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.61 no.8
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• pp.1099-1106
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• 2012

Microgrid is a new electrical energy system that composed of various generators, renewable energy, batteries and loads located near the electrical customers. When Microgrid is interconnected with large power system, Microgrid don't need to control the frequency. But in case of the outage or faults of power system, Microgrid should control the frequency to prevent the shutdown of Microgrid. This paper presents the frequency control methods using the droop function, being used by synchronous generators and EMS(Energy Management System). Using droop function, two battery systems could share the load based on locally measured signals without any communications between batteries. Also, we suggest that EMS should control the controllable distributed generators as P/Q control modes except batteries to overcome the weakness of droop function. Finally we suggest the two batteries systems to prolong the battery's life time considering the economical view. The validation of proposed methods is tested using PSCAD/EMTDC simulations and field test sites at the same time.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.63-71
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• 2013

This paper describes the coordinated droop control method for stand-alone type DC micro-grid to improve reliability and utilization of distributed generations and energy storage. The stand-alone type DC micro-grid consists of several distributed generations such as a wind power generation, solar power and micro-turbine, and energy storage. The proposed method which is based on autonomous control method shows high reliability and stability through coordinated droop control of distributed generations and energy storage and also capability of battery management. The operation of stand-alone type DC micro-grid was analyzed using detail simulation model with PSCAD/EMTDC software. Based on simulation results, a hardware simulator was built and tested with commercially available components and performance of system was verified.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.328-335
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• 2018

An energy management method of DC microgrids using voltage compensation term is proposed in this study. Droop control is often implemented to operate the DC microgrid. However, the droop control necessarily generates voltage variation. Energy flow is also difficult to control because the droop control mainly focuses on proportional load sharing. To solve these problems, the voltage compensation term based on the low-bandwidth communication is used to determine the operating band of the converter. Energy management and voltage variation minimization can be achieved by judging the operating band according to the magnitude of voltage compensation term. The validity of the proposed method is verified by simulation and experiments.

• Proceedings of the KIPE Conference
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• 2011.07a
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• pp.520-521
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• 2011

인버터의 병렬운전은 인버터간의 특성, 선로임피던스 차이, 각 구성품들의 오차 등으로 인해 적정한 제어가 되지 않는 경우 인버터간의 순환전류가 발생하여 인버터의 무효전력 부담이 증가하여 전체 전력 시스템의 용량을 감소시키게 된다. 본 논문에서는 4병렬 인버터의 병렬제어 알고리즘으로서 전압지령치와 주파수지령치의 regulation 성능이 좋은 동기좌표계 droop 제어기법을 적용한 1.2MW급 연료전지용 EBOP를 제안한다.

• Journal of the Optical Society of Korea
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.29-35
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• 2016

This paper deals with a design method and capacity loss of an efficient multi-level modulation scheme for dimmable visible light communications (VLC) systems that use light-emitting diodes (LEDs) with efficiency droop. To this end, the impact of such an impairment on dimmable VLC is addressed with respect to multi-level modulations based on pulse-amplitude modulation (PAM) via data-rate optimization formulation.