Analysis of Voltage Droop Control Method for dc

Microgrids with Simulink: Modelling and

Simulation
Rodrigo A F. Ferreira1,2, Henrique AC. Braga1, Andre A Ferreira1 and Pedro G. Barbosa1

2
1 Power Electronics and Automation Group Electronics and Automation Group
Electrical Engineering Department Federal Institute of Education, Science and
Federal University of Juiz de Fora Technology of Southeast of Minas Gerais
Juiz de Fora, MG Juiz de Fora, MG
36.036-900 Brazil 36.080-001 Brazil

Abstract-This work presents a perfomance study of a with the integration of hybrid electric vehicles (EHV)
dc microgrid when it is used a voltage droop technique to into the grid.
regulated the grid voltage and to control the load sharing In the same way, the most of the alternative energy
between different sources. A small model of a dc microgrid
sources (e.g. photovoltaics, fuel cells, etc.) as well as
comprising microsources and loads was implemented in
many of the energy storage devices such as batteries,
the SimulinklMatlab environment. Some aspects about
supercapacitors and superconducting magnetic energy
centralized (master-slave) and descentralized (voltage
droop) control strategies as well as the procedures to
storage systems (SMES) produce and store electrical

design the controllers, with and without droop control, energy in direct current. Thus, the design of dc
are presented and discussed. Simulation results obtained micro grids is fundamental since the dc loads and
with the digital model of the dc microgrid with three microsources could be easily integrated on the network.
microsources will be presented to validate the effectiveness According to [3], the losses in the dc microgrids will
of the voltage droop strategy, applied to proportional and be lower since there is no skin effect and no reactive
proportional-integral controllers, to regulate the microgrid
power flow in the dc cables. They have additional
voltage.
advantages of no need of voltage synchronization and
Index Terms-dc microgrid, dc-dc converter, voltage
effect of phase imbalance. However, these systems have
droop control.
drawbacks related to overcurrent protection, since the
fault currents do not have natural zero crossing [4] and
I. INTRODUCT ION
[5], and with the control the network voltage by reactive
Microgrid (fJG) is a electrical network comprising power flow, as it happens in ac systems [6].
loads, microsources (fJS) and communication & Figure 1 shows an example of a generic dc microgrid
automation systems. These fJS, also called distributed with microsources, energy storage systems, dc and ac
sources (DS), increase the offer of energy, the reliability loads. Static converters connect all devices to the dc grid.
and the efficiency of electrical power systems since they A dc-ac converter is used as interface between the dc fJG
are able to operate close to loads and connected to or and the ac electric distribution network. This converter
not to another electric power network [1]. is blocked in the case of islanded operation of the dc
Nowadays, loads like lighting systems and microgrid.
electronic equipments (e.g. computers and peripherals In this scenario, an important issue related to the
comunication devices, tv sets among others) are operation of dc microgrids is the dc bus voltage
responsable for about 35 % of the electricity regulation. Two types of voltage control are commonly
consumption in residential and comercial applications used in the literature: master-slave and voltage droop.
[2]. All of these loads have a front-end converter to The master-slave method depends on the communication
transform the ac energy to dc. It is expected that this between the interface converters. The master converter
type of consumption will increase in the near future controls the voltage of the dc bus and sends reference

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 DeBUS A. Master-Slave Control
Grid
Figure 2 shows the block diagram of the master-slave
control scheme. In this figure, each block is composed
by a dc source, a static converter and its controller.
The first block, the master module, controls the grid
dc bus voltage while the other blocks, the slaves, are
current controlled. Despite of the fully controllable load
- sharing [9], this control scheme has the disadvantage
of needing a fast communication channel since the
reference currents for slave converters are provided by
the master block. The loss of the communication link
or malfuncioning of the master block can shut down the
whole system [7] and [11]. Thus, to avoid or reduce the
probability of failure, this system should be design with
some redundancy.
-

Fig. 1. Generic topology of a dc microgrid. DC BUS

:"M-asie------------'
r I
:-4
1

signals to other converters. In the method of voltage

:
1
v" ---'
f
Module
#1 i VDci
1
1 1
droop, the dc bus voltage is measured at the points of 1
-.==J. --l---
l ____

coupling of the converters and it is used to calculate the 1

ISlave
---- ,1 12

-,[
----.
amount of energy that each load or source will consume : #1 Module 1
1 1
or supply. 1
#2 1
ref2 1 IT
1 ----.
In [7] it was presented five different methods of 1 1
1
droop control and other control methods that need some
l ____
----------- jVDC LOAD

level of communication. In [8] and [9] were proposed ---- -----------,

1 T
improvements in the voltage droop control using adaptive ISlave :�
control and integral controllers to reduce steady state
: #n-1 Module 1
1
1
errors. In [10], it is proposed a methodology to assure
1
1
�
reIn
#n 1
1 1
l ________________ I
power sharing between the sources since the power
ratings of the converters are equal. Fig. 2. Schematic diagrama of master-slave control.
The main obj ective of the this work is to present a
comparative analysis of voltage droop control method
using proportional and proportional-integral controllers
B. Voltage Droop Control
to regulate the dc voltage of an isolated dc microgrid. Figure 3 shows the block diagram of the voltage
The dc microgrid, consisting of three dc sources with droop control scheme. Each droop controller emulates
their controllers and a variable load was modeled in an impedance behavior reducing the converter output
the SimulinklMatlab software. Simulation results will voltage with the increase of the supplied current. This
be presented to validate the analysis and the design strategy promotes the current sharing between paralleled
proceedures. converters connected in the dc microgrid without the
need of a central control [7]. The Fig. 4 shows a detail of
II. CONTROL OF P AR ALLELED CON VERTERS the voltage controller of the dc-dc converter. A low-pass
The paralleling of power sources in microgrid filter is used to cut-off harmonic frequencies and fast
applications through power electronics modules offers a oscilations of the dc bus voltage.
number of advantages over the utilization of a single Based on Fig. 4 it is possible to calculate Pre! as

high power converter [7]. Two different methods can follows [6] and [10]:
be used to control paralleled converters on a microgrid:
master-slave and voltage droop [6].
particularities of each method will be presented.
In this section some
Pre! = G (8 ) Vre! -[ ( WLP
8 +WLP
) ]VdC Vdc, (1)

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 DeBUS
investigated to control paralleled converters connected

Module
�I to dc microgrid. Despite of the easy implementation of

..... the P controller it exhibits steady-state errors for step

#1
changes in the reference signal. On the other hand,
converter with a PI controller has the disadvantage
12
Module
----. of presenting a poor load sharing due to the integral
characteristic of the compensator [9].
. ..... #2
IT
----.
TVDC LOAD A. Proportional Controller
The proportional controller can be designed to impose
----"-+
In
a droop on the operation characteristic of the converter in
Module
vr�r. .... #n similar way as it happens when a dc source has a series a
resistance Rd,n. Thus, the gain kp of the transfer function
can be writtes as,
Fig. 3. Schematic diagram of voltage droop controL

G (s) kp
1 . (3)
R
= =
DC
SOURCE d,n

where the subscript n indicates the converter number.

Substituting (3) in (1) and assuming 0 dB gain for
the low-pass filter, it is possible to write the expression

-- bellow for the rated power of the source.

Prated,n =
"
Un ( 1- Un
v;.�f,n )
" ) y-
d,n
(4)

Low-pass filter
where <5n = (1 - }!,IC )
T
Vref ,n
is the nominal droop or the
relative converter output voltage droop for the rated
power.
Fig. 4. Voltage control scheme of the dc-dc converter Defining Prated,n, Vref,n and <5n for each source, it
is possible to calculate the value of Rd,n. A smooth
droop will result in a good voltage regulation to the
where G (s) is the transfer function of the compensator, converters. However, in this case, they will present a poor
Vref is the reference voltage, W
LP
is the cutoff frequency load sharing characteristic. On the other hand, a steep
of the low pass filter, and Vdc is the dc grid voltage at slope will result in a good load sharing characterisitc
the point of the converter coupling. and a poor voltage regulation. From [9] and [10], a good
From (1) the reference current for each converter can microgrid performance is achieved for <5n in the range
be calculated as follows, of 2 and 5 %.
Since the controller provides a resistive droop
Pref
Iref = (2) behavior for the microsource, the dc bus capacitance
Vs )
may be calculated to force a similar performance of a
where Vs is the voltage of the dc source.
Butterworth filter for the dc microgrid [10]. Thus, the

III. T HE VOLTAGE DROO P DESIGN total capacitance at the source converters side of the DC
bus can be calculated by,
The voltage droop scheme can be viewed as a negative
slope in the converter characteristic in the P-V plane. In
this work, two types of controllers, proportional (P) and
4
Cdc,conv = (5)
proportional-integral (PI), will have their performance Rd· wLP

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 �
� -"

MeaoValue 2

Fig. 5. Simulink dc microgrid model.

B. Proportional-Integral Controller band D.i to assure a fast and accurate response for the

A Proportional-Integral controller given by (6) may

converter [12]. It was implemented using a m-function
block with a band of ±5 A.
be used to cancel the steady state error.

G (s) = kp [1 S�i ] ,
+ (6) �.K-
Vref
� Iref
P/v
where � is the integral time constant of the controller.
The gain of the PI can be determined applying the
methodology used in the P--controller. In [9] the author
calculates the PI time constant by:

Ti =
4
--.

wLP
(7)
lOG

Fig. 6. Simulink P I block diagram with voltage droop.

IV. S IMUL INK MODELL ING AND S IM UL AT ION

Figure 5 shows the block diagram of the system

modelled in the SimulinklMatiab. It has a resistive load
and three dc sources. Three boost (step-up) converters
connect the sources to the dc microgrid. This converter
does not permit the flow of energy from the grid to the
dc sources. The voltage of the dc microgrid is 750 v.
Figure 6 shows the Simulink block diagram of the
current controller. The output of this block feeds the
hysteresis controller shown in Fig. 7. The hysteresis
controller has a non-linear comparator with a dead Fig. 7. Simulink hysteresis block diagram.

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 DC bus I.Qltage
A. Case # 1 850
--Vref
In the first case, the dc sources were modelled as
_ 800
-- P controller
ideal sources and all of them with 200 V and a rated G
<.)
----- PI controller

20 kW. The controllers were designed for

power equal to
-0
> 750

Rd,n 1.34 nand Cconvn

= 17 mF and considering =

on 5 % and wLP
= lOOK radj s. Table I gives the P
=
700
0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4 0.45 0.5

and PI parameters. The reference voltage supplied to the 1ime(s)

Al.erage Power
controller is 750 V. 10

TABLE I 9

P AND PI PARAMETERS $
6 8
Cl.
7
P arameter Value
6
kp (W/V2) 0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4 0.45 0.5
1ime(s)
Ti ( ms )
Fig. 9. Detail of the de bus voltage.

Figure 8 shows the voltage of the dc microgrid and

the behavior of the powers supplied by each converter to response. However, the steady state error is canceled. For
the load for a P and PI controller, respectively. From 0 the PI--controller, the power supplied to the load varies
to 50 ms the microgrid is energized. In t = 250 ms the from 20.05 kW to 29.89 kW in t = 250 ms. Since all
value of the power drained by the load is step changed the dc sources are equals the three converters have the
from 20 kW to 30 kW. Fig. 9 shows the detail of the same behavior.
microgrid dc voltage and of the converter powers during
the load variation. B. Case # 2
In this second study it will be analysed the behavior
DC bus I.Qltage
of the system for the case of the sources having different
values. The three dc sources voltages are 250 V, 200 V
� and 150 V, respectively. All the other parameters are not
500
changed.
<.)
-0 --Vref
>
-- P controller
----- PI controller
Figure 10 shows the voltage of the dc microgrid and
0 the behavior of the powers supplied by each converter
0 0.05 0.1 0.1 5 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4 0.45 0.5
1ime(s) to the load for a P and PI controller, respectively.
Al.erage Power
As in the previous case, the load is step changed in
t = 250 ms. Fig. 11 shows the detail of the dc
voltage and power supplied by each converter. Despite
of the zero steady-state error, the PI--controllers force an
oscillatory behavior for the powers of the sources. This
characteristic indicates that the design of the controller

1ime(s) should be done carefully to avoid unstable operation of

the microgrid.
V. CONCLUSION
Fig. 8. Behavior of the de bus voltage (top) and average supplied
power (bottom) for balanced de sources. This work presented simulation results of a dc
microgrid with droop voltage regulation. Some aspects
Analyzing the results it is possible to conclude that of the design of the voltages controllers were presented.
the P-controller has a faster response. However, the Two types of compensators, with voltage droop, were
dc voltage is equal to 740 V before the load step investigated. The P--controller exhibited a faster response
change and 730 V after. The total power supplied to while the PI showed a better power regulation and a zero
the load varies from 19.28 kW to 27.86 kW. On the steady-state error. Both controllers, P and PI, exhibited
other hand, the PI-controller exhibits slower transient a good load sharing characteristic. The voltage droop

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 1000 DC bus ""Itage
CAPES, Federal University of Juiz de Fora and Federal

800 Institute of Education, Science and Technology of

� 600
Southeast of Minas Gerais.
"
."
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method demonstrated to be a good strategy to share the

currents between different converters without the need
of a central controller. The preliminary results indicates
that this type of control is a good option to integrate
distributed energy sources into a microgrid. Non-linear
control, such as SMC (Sliding Mode Control) has been
investigated to replace the voltage droop scheme.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The authors would like to express their gratitude

for the financial support offered by FAPEMIG, CNPq,

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