Cooperative 

Control of Photovoltaic Systems

Dr. Chandrashekhar N. Bhende
Associate Professor, School of Electrical Sciences
Indian Institute of Technology Bhubaneswar
 Introduction
 Penetration of photovoltaic (PV) sources is increasing day by
day into power network.
 As large number of PV sources are connected in parallel in
distribution network, their control is a challenging task.
 The intermittence of PVs’ energy will result in certain
problems, such as voltage fluctuation, frequency fluctuation.
 Thus, it is necessary to control and regulate the outputs of
those PV units in accordance with the requirement of
distribution network.
 Apart from power flow control, we should let those PVs
provide some ancillary services such as voltage regulation.

2
 Control Modes to Manage Output of RES

Usually, there are three types of control modes to manage the

outputs of multiple connected renewable energy systems
(RES) / microgrids:

 Centralized mode
 Decentralized mode and
 Distributed mode

3
Centralized Control

Fig.1: Centralized Control

ESS Energy Storage System 4

Centralized control

 This kind of strategy requires communication between the

central controller and every single component in the
microgrid to collect information globally and a powerful
central controller to process large amounts of data [1].
 A central controller sends its command, which is calculated
online or offline, to the PVs through the designed
communication channels.

5
Centralized control

Drawbacks

 This mode needs to collect system‐wide information and

sends command globally.
 For a power system whose distribution networks have
numerous and geographically dispersed PVs, such
centralized control mode is too expensive to be
implemented or may not be efficient due to the long
distance communication.
 Susceptible to single point failure.

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Decentralized control

 The fully decentralized control strategy which is based on

local information only, such as droop control [1].
 This type of control strategy is robust and less expensive in
the sense that no communication is required.

Fig.2: f-P and V-Q droop

7
Decentralized control

Fig.3: Control of each PV unit

DG Distributed generation

Every DG is equipped with droop controller

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Decentralized control

Fig.4: Control of each PV unit [2]

9
Decentralized control

Drawbacks

 For many PVs, it is difficult to guarantee their appropriate

operating point under varying factors (such as the load
changes) since those PVs can not change their outputs in
accordance with the requirement of the distribution
network.
 Due to lack of broader information available, it may not be
effective to utilize all available resources in the network in
an optimal way [1].

10
Distributed Control
 It can use local communication networks and combine the
positive features of both centralized and decentralized
controls while limiting their disadvantages.
 That is to say, a PV will incorporate the information from
neighbouring units into its control strategy.
 This type of control is actually a network control, which has
been systematically studied in the field of cooperative control.

Fig.5: Distributed control [3]

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Distributed Control

 The distinctive feature of such type of control is that it

allows local and changing communication networks, is
robust with respect to intermittency and and also tolerates
connection/ disconnection of network components.
 As the level of PV penetration increases, intermittent
changes of these PV outputs become too many to consider,
and hence it becomes intractable for either the decentralised
or centralized mode to adequately manage a distribution
network.
 For this reason, a distributed mode‐based control strategy
provides good solution to regulate multiple PVs’ power
outputs in a distribution network.

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IoT-based Control

 The integration of PV systems into resulting microgrids should

address at the first priority issues of reliability and resilience
due to energy abundance, widespread availability,
maintenance and feasibility in remote areas with scalable and
versatile capabilities.
 IoT based approach can be good alternative in case of large
network where many microgrids/sources are connected
together, not only to manage the power flow in better way,
also to improve reliability and resiliency of power network [4].
 The system features the use of Internet of Things (IoT) as its
core to coordinate the operation of multiple subsystems in a
scalable manner.

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IoT-based Control

 The microgrid sources represent an inseparable part of the whole

energy management system consisting of numerous devices
operating in different clusters of the networks, containing
physical systems and information sensing, processing,
intelligence, and control in a cyber‐physical system.
 The multifaceted interaction between information and
communication technologies together with the physical solar
energy in a microgrid introduces new security concerns.
 To improve the system performance, in particular, reliability and
resilience, a distributed control system is needed possessing the
capabilities of tolerance to such faults from the power supply,
communication or hardware and self recovery to maintain
continuity of the service.

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IoT-based Control

 In such control architecture, communication data can be

exploited to automatically detect and isolate faults using
distributed intelligence within the Internet of Things (IoT)
framework.
 Also, various online resources such as astronomy data and
real‐time meteorological information can be gathered to
maximize the energy harvest.

15
Example of Solar Energy Harvesting using IoT-based Platform

Fig.6: IoT-based solar energy

management structure [4]

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Dependable control structure

 At the low level of the solar tracking system, dependable

control is proposed to drive the PV panels while maintaining
the system reliability and resilience in the case of hardware
failures and communication imperfections.

Fig. 7: Structure of a Dependable control structure

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 Standby, the duty processor can be different at a time,
determined by the state machine.
 To activate a standby controller, it requires certain
circumstances such as (i) the duty controller running out of
resources; (ii) the duty controller facing hardware failures; (iii)
the data communication encountering an imperfect condition;
or (iv) no state variables being broadcast.
 In such circumstances, the token will be released for other
healthy controllers to take over the control.
 This mechanism thus enables the scalability of the system, i.e.
adding/removing controllers without the need for a priority
sequence of the controllers.

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Resource efficiency in dependable control and IoT
 With IoT, every device is connected to each other and abstraction
between them is established through the cloud infrastructure.
 No controller is assigned to a particular plant. Rather, at a time
there will be a controller ready to take control of several plants.
 This particular controller can, moreover, play the role of a backup
controller for others at the same time, as illustrated in Fig. 8.

Fig. 8: Resource efficiency: one controller controls multiple 
plants while acting as redundancy for other controllers
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 Cooperative Control for Reactive Power 
Sharing among PV Inverters
 In decentralized control, traditionally, the reactive power sharing
among various PV inverters can be achieved using droop
characteristics.
 Traditional static droop‐controlled systems assume that the
generators are able to provide sufficient power as required. This
is however not always true, especially in renewable systems,
where the energy sources may not be able to provide enough
power due to the intermittency.
 Another problem with static droop control is that if the operating
point of particular inverter changes, consequently, the operating
points of other inverters change in accordance with the first
inverter.
 These drawbacks of static droop control can be rectified using
dynamic droop control strategy.
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Static Droop

Consider the Q‐V droop method for reactive power sharing among
parallelly connected PV inverters.
The static Q‐V droop characteristic is as shown in Fig.9.

Fig.9: Static droop curve

21
The static Q-V droop characteristic is as shown in Fig.9 is defined by
following Eq.

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐(1)

22
Reactive power sharing based on Dynamic Droop control

 In dynamic droop control, the droop coefficients vary based on 
the reserve capacities of the respective inverters. 
 It means that the inverter with higher reserve capacity can have 
higher reactive power share and the one with lower capacity can 
have lesser share. 
 Also the inverter with higher
reserve capacity has a smaller
droop coefficient ensuring a larger
share of reactive power. Therefore
the droop characteristic varies as
the inverter capacity varies as
shown in Fig.10.

Fig.10: Dynamic droop curve

23
The dynamic Q‐V droop characteristic is as shown in Fig.10 
is defined by following Eq.

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐(2)

where, Si_rating is the kVA rating and Pi is the active power output 

of ith inverter

 As per Eq. (2), dynamic droop coefficient has two components:

first component depends on the reserve capacity of the
inverter, second component is called as droop incremental
parameter Δηvi.
 The parameter Δηvi is used to maintain the PCC voltage at the
nominal value by means of corrective action.

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 If the change in voltage V (i.e., Vnom‐Vpcc) is negative then the
corrective action (Δηv) will increase hereby increasing the droop
to bring the PCC voltage to the nominal value.
 Similarly the opposite action is done for a positive change in
voltage V.
 All the parallelly connected inverters adjust their respective Δηv
simultaneously to adjust PCC voltage to nominal value.
 This simultaneous adjustment of droop coefficients (Δηv1, Δηv2,
… Δηvn) are done in such a way that all the controller produces
the same desired voltage, which is given by Eq. (3).

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐(3)

25
To satisfy Eq. (3), dynamic droop control generates the reference
reactive power (Qref ) for each inverter control, which is in turn
used to generate Iq‐ref for the controller shown in Fig.11.

Vd
I abc (bus  5) dq Vq Pulses for three
Vabc (bus  5) abc Id phase inverter
Iq
Id PLL  SPWM
Vd Pulse generator

Kid Ud 2 m

ma
mb
mc
I d ref K pd  d
S Vdc
L L abc
dq
Kiq Uq 2
I qref K pq 
S Vdc mq
Iq Vq

Fig.11: Current controller of inverter for real and reactive power control

26
 Results and Discussions

Bus 5

ZL1 Z L2 Z L3 Z L4
Bus 1 Bus 2 Bus  3 Bus 4

LC 1 LC 2 LC 3 LC 4

Vdc1 Vdc 2 Vdc 3 Vdc4

Fig.12: . Schematic diagram of studied microgrid

27
 Performance Analysis of Controller for Voltage Regulation

Consider, variations in reactive power demand at bus‐5 as shown in

Fig.13(a).

(a)

Fig.13: Voltage
regulation

(b)

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 As number of PV units (and their associated inverters) are
increased to four, the response of dynamic droop controller
becomes more sluggish i.e., about 16 cycles for four inverters
as observed in figure.

Fig.14: PCC Voltage

29
Utilization of reserve reactive power capacities

Fig.15: Reactive power

capacities

Reserve Capacity St. state value of reactive St. state value of reactive
kVAR) power between t=3‐6 sec power between t=6‐8 sec
Inverter‐1 : 30 29.92 kVAR 15.53 kVAR
Inverter‐2 : 28.67 23.97 kVAR 12.46 kVAR
Inverter‐3 : 26.3 25.35 kVAR 13.16 kVAR
Inverter‐4 : 22.85 18.46 kVAR 9.55kVAR 30
Results and Discussions (Cont...)
 From Fig.15 (b) and Table, it can be observed that using dynamic droop
controller, inverter with highest reserve capacity contributes highest
share of reactive power, thereby operating with a lesser margin.
 Moreover, it can be observed that the other inverters are not fully
utilizing their reserve capacities.
 Hence, power sharing among the inverters is not uniform.

Conclusion
We need to workout on improved control strategy so that
response becomes faster and we can achieve uniform power
sharing among the inverters as per inverter’s capacities.

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Cooperative Control of Photovoltaic‐
based Water Pumping System

32
 Cooperative Control of Photovoltaic‐based 
Water Pumping System

 Rather than operating as individual PV‐pumping system, it

would be beneficial for consumers, if some of the PV systems are
connected together and they can effectively utilize the available
PV power.
 Community or cooperative based PV system is a such kind of
example in which neighbouring consumer’s PV–arrays are
connected with each other.
 By operating together, reliability of overall system increases and
system may become cost effective.

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 VPV

Vdc

Fig.16: Community based solar water pumping system [5]
34
 Control in Stand-Alone mode

The power, speed and torque relation of motor is given in Eq.(4)

……………………….. (4)

 In Eq.(4), the torque of water pump is constant as head of the

well is constant, hence power is directly proportional to speed.
 For the stand‐alone system, if PV power is less than the load
power then DC‐link voltage (Vdc) decreases and vice‐versa.
 Hence, if Vdc is regulated to its reference value, the power
balance between PV and load can be established.
 In order to match the load power with available PV power,
power drawn by motor is varied by varying its speed within
permissible limit.

35
 N
120
Vmpp
P
V dc

ha hb hc

Fig.17: Basic control scheme for power balance

36
 Power Sharing among PV‐pumping Units

 Assuming that, one consumer’s generation is not sufficient

enough to run his motor even at a minimum speed to drive the
water pump.

 Under such situation, other consumer can give certain amount of

power to that consumer so that his motor can run at a minimum
speed at which it can drive the water pump.

 The designed controller reduces the Vdc of PV system which

requires the power. Due to mismatch in Vdc, power flow occurs
from the system having surplus amount of power to power
deficit system.

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Power Sharing among PV‐pumping Units
PPV‐S ― Surplus PV power
Pmin ― Min. power  required by  

PPVS
P min deficit unit

The reduction of Vdc corresponds

PPV
to the power requirement of the
V
pumping system

PPV
Pmin  Fig.18: Control scheme for power balance and
V
power sharing [5]
N
120
Vmpp
P
V dc

ha hb hc

38
 Control of Grid‐connected System 
Grid‐side Inverter Control
 Grid-side inverter controls the power exchange between grid and
pumping system.
 For pumping requirement, it is not necessary to run the motor at its
rated speed, in fact consumer may run the motor at below rated
speed.
 Doing so, water flows little slowly which does not affect much for
irrigation or water supply purpose.
 Hence, by running the motor at reduced speed (instead of rated
speed) consumer can draw the lesser power from the grid and
reduce the electricity consumption.

39
Grid‐side Inverter Control

In order to provide the flexibility to the consumer, the reference grid

power (P*grid) is calculated as:

where, PPVT is total available PV power and Pmc corresponds to power

command of the motor i.e., either rated speed or reduced speed.
However, lower limit
 constraint of speed
Va ,b ,c grid Vd grid need to be maintained.
Ia ,b ,c grid Idgrid Vdgrid 
PPVT *
Pgrid
Id_ref Vd

Pmc Pgrid L
Idgrid Vq  0
Fig.19. Power control for grid-side inverter [5]
40
Control Coordination for Sharing of De‐loaded Power among 
PV Systems during Surplus PV Power Condition
 Under the situation of available PV power is much more than load demand,
then large amount of PV power penetrates to the grid.
 This affects adversely on the distribution lines and the grid, particularly in in
rural areas where grid is weak.
 Therefore, under this situation, PV power needs to be reduced through de-
loading operation. This can be achieved by shifting the operating point of PV
from maximum power point (MPP) to a reduced power output.

41
 To regulate the reduced power supplied by the PV‐array, proper
control is required for DC‐DC converter.
 When grid current (Ig) is greater than its limit (Ilim) then
operation is shifted from MPP to de‐loading point so that
reduced power can be drawn from PV.

42
……..…………………….. (5)

……..………………………(6)

43
 Once, total de‐loaded power (Pde_T) is calculated from Eq.(7), the
de‐loaded power shared by each PV need to be found out.

 As ratings and irradiance of two PV systems may be different,

question comes how the Pde_T can be shared among PV systems.

 Referring to the P‐V curve, for de‐loading of parallelly connected

PV systems, simultaneously two conditions must be satisfied:
― first the total de‐loaded power must be equal to sum of
individual de‐loaded powers of PV.
― second the DC‐link voltage of all the systems must be equal to
avoid the undesirable power flow between the systems i.e.,

……..……………….. (7)
……..……………….. (8)

44
 The above mentioned objective is fulfilled by modifying perturb
and observe (P&O) algorithm. From the Algorithm, the unique
Vde is calculated so that Eq.(7) and Eq.(8) are satisfied and this
Vde becomes the reference DC‐link voltage (V*dc) for the DC‐DC
converter control as shown in Fig.20.

Vdc*


Vde

Fig.20: Controller of DC-DC converter for maximum power

point and de-loading operation [5] 45
 Results (Stand‐alone System)
Power Sharing between PV‐pumping Systems 

 Consider that PV power of pumping system‐1 (PS‐1) is constant

and PV power of PS‐2 is reduced to 2.58 kW at t=5 sec.
 Due to reduction in PV power of PS‐2, its motor output power
comes down to 2.26 kW without power sharing control as shown
by red colour in Fig.21(b). Similarly speed reduces to 1423 rpm
which is shown by blue colour in Fig.21(d).
 With the proposed control of motor inverter (Fig.18) of PS‐2, the
Vdc is reduced by 5% and fraction of power flows from PS‐1 to
PS‐2. Hence, motor output of PS‐1 decreases to 4.713 kW and
motor output of PS‐2 increases to 3.461 kW as shown in Fig.21 (a‐
b), at t=5 sec with black colour.
46
 Results (Stand‐alone System)
Power Sharing between PV‐pumping Systems 

(a)

(b)

Fig.21 (a-b): Power of pumping sytem-1 and 2

47
 (c)

(d)

(e)

Fig.21. (c‐d): Motor speed of pumping system‐1 and 2, 
(e): DC‐link voltage of pumping sytem‐2 48
 Results (Grid Connected System)
Flexible Power Exchange from the Grid
 When PV power is less than load power then deficit power
comes from grid. In proposed control scheme (i.e., Fig.19), the
flexibility is provided to consumer that he can run the motor
below rated speed so that power from grid can be reduced.
 In Fig. 22, at t=2s, assume that PV power reduces to 4 kW. First,
consider that consumer runs the motor at rated speed (i.e., Pmc
sets to 5.5 kW) up to t=6s. To maintain rated load, the deficit (i.e.,
1.68 kW) comes from grid.
 Now consider that, consumer wants to run the motor at below
rated speed at t=6 sec (i.e., Pmc set to 4.8 kW). From Fig.22(a), 6 sec
onward it can be observed that motor output reduces and hence
power supplies by grid reduces.

49
 (a)

(b)
Fig.22. (a) Power flow variation in pumping sytem‐1, (b) speed variation of 
pumping system‐1 by keeping PV‐power of other units in rated condition
50
 Results (Grid Connected System)
Power Sharing by De‐loaded PVs under Condn of Surplus PV‐power

 Consider that generated PV power is quit high as compared to

load requirement, then large surplus power goes into the grid.
 Consider that both pumping systems consists two motors of
rating 4 kW and 1.5 kW.
 At t=3 sec, 4 kW motors of both pumping systems shut down.
Due to this, grid power increases from 22.24 kW to 30.24 kW
and grid current (Igrid) increases from 34.149 A to 46.43 A.
 Assuming grid current limit (Ilim) set at 40A, as Igrid exceeds the
Ilim, the de‐loaded operation gets activated through DC‐DC
converter controller (Fig.20) and both PV systems produce de‐
loaded power as per mentioned P&O Algorithm.

51
 (a) (b)

(c) (d)
Fig.23: Response of the system during high penetration of PV‐power:
(a) PV‐power and motor output in pumping system‐1 (b) PV‐power and motor 
output in pumping sytem‐2 (c) Grid‐power, (d) Grid current

52
 Hardware Results
 The hardware prototype of the system is developed using solar
emulator, dSpace Microlab box, DC‐DC converter, 3‐phase
inverters and BLDC motor (1.5 hp, 3000 rpm).
 The hardware setup is realized for the stand‐alone system.

Fig.24: Experimental test bed of proposed system [5]

53
 Power sharing between PV pumping units

(a)

(b)

(c)

Fig.25: (a) DC link voltage variation of PS‐1 and PS‐2 for power 
transfer between them, (b) Power transferred from PS‐1 to PS‐2, 
(c) Speed variation of BLDC motor ‐1 and motor‐2
54
Coordination for power sharing by de‐loaded PV units

(a)

(b)

Fig.26: Response of system parameters during de‐loading operation (a) 
Variation of PV‐power of the PS‐1 and PS‐2, 
(b) DC‐link voltage of the both the units

55
 Coordination for power sharing by de‐loaded PV units

(a) (b)

Fig.27: Solar PV Emulator characteristics and sharing of de‐loaded power

56
 Key References
[1] Y. Xu, W. Zhang, G. Hug, S. Kar and Zhicheng Li, ʺCooperative Control
of Distributed Energy Storage Systems in a Microgridʺ, IEEE Transactions
on Smart Grid, Vol. 5, No.1, Jan. 2015.
[2] P. H. Divshali, A. Alimardani, S. H. Hosseinian and M. Abedi,
ʺDecentralized Cooperative Control Strategy of Microsources for
Stabilizing Autonomous VSC‐Based Microgrids”, IEEE Transactions on
Power Systems, Vol. 27, No.4, Nov. 2012.
[3] H. Xin, Z. Lu, Z. Qu, D. Gan, D. Qi, ʺCooperative control strategy for
multiple photovoltaic generators in distribution networksʺ, IET Control
Theory and Applications, Vol.5, No. 14, 2011.
[4] Quang Ha and Manh Phung, ʺIoT‐enabled dependable control for solar
energy harvesting in smart buildingsʺ, IET Smart Cities, Vol.1, No. 2, 2019.
[5] C. N. Bhende, S. K. Hota, K. R. Nayak, ʺCooperative control of
photovoltaic based water pumping systemʺ, IET Renewable Power
Generation, vol. 14, no. 12, Oct. 2020.

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