Robust adaptive droop control for DC microgrids

TL;DR

This paper introduces a robust adaptive control method for DC microgrids that improves current sharing and voltage stability, overcoming limitations of traditional linear control models affected by system noise and disturbances.

Contribution

It develops a robust adaptive control approach that dynamically adjusts droop characteristics, ensuring better performance in microgrids with uncertain and noisy conditions.

Findings

Accurately shares current between resources

Maintains stable bus voltage

Outperforms conventional control methods

Abstract

There are tradeoffs between current sharing among distributed resources and DC bus voltage stability when conventional droop control is used in DC microgrids. As current sharing approaches the setpoint, bus voltage deviation increases. Previous studies have suggested using secondary control utilizing linear controllers to overcome drawbacks of droop control. However, linear control design depends on an accurate model of the system. The derivation of such a model is challenging because the noise and disturbances caused by the coupling between sources, loads, and switches in microgrids are under-represented. This under-representation makes linear modeling and control insufficient. Hence, in this paper, we propose a robust adaptive control to adjust droop characteristics to satisfy both current sharing and bus voltage stability. First, the time-varying models of DC microgrids are derived. Second, the improvements for the adaptive control method are presented. Third, the application of the enhanced adaptive method to DC microgrids is presented to satisfy the system objective. Fourth, simulation and experimental results on a microgrid show that the adaptive method precisely shares current between two distributed resources and maintains the nominal bus voltage. Last, the comparative study validates the effectiveness of the proposed method over the conventional method.