• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.57 no.4
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• pp.582-588
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• 2008

Microgrids are new distribution level power networks that consist of various electronically-interlaced generators and sensitive loads. The important control object of Microgrids is to supply reliable and high-quality power even during the faults or loss of mains(islanding) cases. This paper presents power control methods to coordinate multiple distributed generators(DGs) against abnormal cases such as islanding and load power variations. Using speed-droop and voltage-droop characteristics, multiple distributed generators can share the load power based on locally measured signals without any communications between them. This paper adopts the droop controllers for multiple DG control and improved them by considering the generation speed of distribution level generators. Dynamic response of the proposed control scheme has been investigated under severe operation cases such as islanding and abrupt load changes through PSCAD/EMTDC simulations.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.1650-1657
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• 2017

In this study, the distributed secondary voltage control of islanded microgrids with multi-agent consensus algorithm is investigated. As an alternative to a time-triggered approach, an event-triggered scheme is proposed to reduce the communication load among inverter-based distributed generators (DGs). The proposed aperiodic control scheme reduced unnecessary utilization of limited network bandwidth without degrading control performance. By properly establishing a distributed triggering condition in DG local controller, each inverter is only required to send voltage information when its own event occurs. The compensation of voltage amplitude deviation can be realized, and redundant data exchange related to fixed high sampling rate can be avoided. Therefore, an efficient use of communication infrastructure can be realized, particularly when the system is operating in steady state. The effectiveness of the proposed scheme is verified by simulations on a microgrid test system.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.191-200
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• 2019

This study proposes a hardware-in-the-loop simulation (HILS) system based on National Instruments' PXI platform to test power management and operation strategies for DC microgrids (MGs). The HILS system is developed based on the controller HIL prototype, which involves testing the controller board in hardware with a real-time simulation model of the plant in a real-time digital simulator. The system provides an economical and effective testing function for research on MG systems. The decentralized power management strategy based on the DC bus signaling method for DC MGs has been developed and implemented on the HILS platform. HILS results are determined to be similar to those of the off-line simulation in PSIM software.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.1609-1618
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• 2015

DC microgrids are considered as prospective systems because of their easy connection of distributed energy resources (DERs) and electric vehicles (EVs), reduction of conversion loss between dc output sources and loads, lack of reactive power issues, etc. These features make them very suitable for future industrial and commercial buildings' power systems. In addition, the bipolar-type dc system structure is more popular, because it provides two voltage levels for different power converters and loads. To keep voltage balanced in such a dc system, a bidirectional dual buck-boost voltage balancer with direct coupling is introduced based on P-cell and N-cell concepts. This results in greatly enhanced system reliability thanks to no shoot-through problems and lower switching losses with the help of power MOSFETs. In order to increase system efficiency and reliability, a novel burst-mode control strategy is proposed for the dual buck-boost voltage balancer. The basic operating principle, the current relations, and a small-signal model of the voltage balancer are analyzed under the burst-mode control scheme in detail. Finally, simulation experiments are performed and a laboratory unit with a 5kW unbalanced ability is constructed to verify the viability of the bidirectional dual buck-boost voltage balancer under the proposed burst-mode control scheme in low-voltage bipolar-type dc microgrids.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.282-293
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• 2017

There exists a strong coupling between real and reactive power owing to the complex impedances in droop based islanded microgrids (MGs). The existing virtual impedance methods consider improvements of the impedance matching for sharing of the voltage controlled power (VCP) (reactive power for Q-V droop, and real power for P-V droop), which yields a 1-DOF (degree of freedom) tunable virtual impedance. However, a weak impedance matching for sharing of the frequency controlled power (FCP) (real power for $P-{\omega}$ droop, and reactive power for $Q-{\omega}$ droop) may result in FCP overshoots and even oscillations during load transients. This in turn results in VCP oscillations due to the strong coupling. In this paper, a 2-DOF tunable adaptive virtual impedance method considering impedance matching for both real and reactive power (IM-PQ) is proposed to improve the power sharing performance of MGs. The dynamic response is promoted by suppressing the coupled power oscillations and power overshoots while realizing accurate power sharing. In addition, the proposed power sharing controller has a better parametric adaptability. The stability and dynamic performances are analyzed with a small-signal state-space model. Simulation and experimental results are presented to investigate the validity of the proposed scheme.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• v.1 no.4
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• pp.409-413
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• 2006

This paper deals with the design and testing of a simulator system for microgrids with distributed generations. This system is composed of a Real Time Digital Simulator (RTDS) and a power amplifier. The RTDS parts are operated for real time simulation for the microgrid model and the distributed generation source model. The power amplifiers are operated fur amplification of the RTDS's simulated output signal, which is a node voltage of the microgrid and distributed generation source. In this paper, we represent an RTDS system design, specification and test results of a power amplifier and simulation results of a PV (Photovoltaic) system and wind turbine system. The proposed system is applicable for development and performance testing of a PCS (Power Conversion System) for renewable energy sources.

• 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.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.2338-2349
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• 2016

This paper presents an impedance-matching-based control scheme for the harmonic resonance damping of multiple grid-connected-converters (GCCs) with LCL filters. As indicated in this paper, harmonic resonance occurs if a GCC possesses an output impedance that is not matched with the rest of the network in some specific frequency bands. It is also revealed that the resonance frequency is associated with the number of GCCs, the grid impedance and even the capacitive loads. By controlling the grid-side current instead of the converter-side current, the critical LCL filter is restricted as an internal component. Thus, the closed-loop output impedance of the GCC within the filter can be configured. The proposed scheme actively regulates the output impedance of the GCC to match the impedance of the external network, based on the detected resonance frequency. As a result, the resonance risk of multiple GCCs can be avoided, which is beneficial for the plug-and-play property of the GCCs in microgrids. Simulation and experimental results validate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.62 no.3
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• pp.322-331
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• 2013

This paper describes the development of the pilot plant of distributed intelligent management system for a microgrid. For optimal control and management of microgrids, intelligent agents area applied to the microgrid management system. Each agent includes intelligent algorithms to make decisions on behalf of the corresponding microgrid entity such as distributed generators, local loads, and so on. To this end, each agent has its own resources to evaluate the system conditions by collecting local information and also communicating with other agents. This paper presents key features of the data communication and management of the developed pilot plant such as the construction of mesh network using local wireless communication techniques, the autonomous agent coordination schemes using plug-and-play functions of agents and contract net protocol (CNP) for decision-making. The performance of the pilot plant and developed algorithms are verified via real-time microgrid test bench based on hardware-in-the-loop simulation systems.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.345-351
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• 2018

A distributed control method is proposed to improve the power sharing performance of bidirectional distributed generators and the voltage regulation performance of a DC bus in a DC microgrid. Voltage sensitivity analysis based on power flow analysis is conducted to analyze the structural characteristics of a DC microgrid. A distributed control method using a voltage sensitivity matrix is proposed on the basis of this analysis. The proposed method uses information received through the communication system and performs the droop gain variation method and voltage shift method without additional PI controllers. This approach achieves improved power sharing and voltage regulation performance without output transient states. The proposed method is implemented through a laboratory-scaled experimental system consisting of two bidirectional distributed generators, namely, a load and a non-dispatchable distributed generator in a four-bus ring-type model. The experimental results show improved power sharing accuracy and voltage regulation performance.