INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCIENTIFIC & TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH VOLUME 9, ISSUE 03, MARCH 2020 ISSN 2277-8616

HIERARCHICAL CONTROL OF DC MICROGRID

Chalasani Sri Sai Amrutha, kanugula Rebeca, S.Saravanan

Abstract— A microgrid can efficiently integrate the several sources of distributed generation and can supply switching power among island and
connected modes. DC microgrids are more advantageous than AC microgrids because of high efficiency, stability and reliability. In this paper, for
achieving voltage regulation and current sharing, a distributed control strategy is used. This control strategy maintains the constant output voltage of
boost converter within the range and also communication network is used to achieve current sharing effectively. The controller makes output voltage of
each generating unit controllable in microgrid instead of controlling average output voltage of the microgrid. A flexible control performance is provided by
this control strategy.
Index Terms— , current sharing, DC/DC converters, DC microgrid, distributed control scheme, distributed energy resources, droop controller, voltage
regulation.

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1 INTRODUCTION
A microgrid is a distributed system with distributed energy
resources, storage devices and flexible loads, such system
can operate both in connected and disconnected (islanded)
modes. DC microgrids are more competent and reliable than
AC microgrids due to the following reasons stated: i)
conversion stages are eliminated between DC-AC and AC-DC,
reactive power component, harmonics and skin effect are not
present in the system, so losses minimized [1][2]. For the
above benefits recent decades DC microgrids are being
noticed and considered one of the important thrust area for the
researchers. DC microgrids are easily integrate with different
renewable and non-renewable energy resources [3]. In order
to achieve the maximum utilization and coordination between
all the associated resources, the distributed control schemes
are used.To reduce the complexity in communication networks
a distributed control strategy is used which is explained in
[4][5].
In [14- 16], the authors considered the two main objectives
such as a) droop based current sharing and b) regulate the
voltage, both of which are realized with the help of a
secondary controller. The primary controller is used to sustain
the system stability while the secondary controller maintains
the reference value. The parallel operation of DC sources is
mostly based on a droop control approach [6]. When cable line
parameters, such as inductance and the resistance of the DC
sources, are not equal, a load sharing error occurs, which can
be minimized by tuning the droop parameters. The droop gain
and reference voltage values are considered to be the main
parameters for achieving bus voltage within prescribed limits
and effectively sharing loads. The mentioned controllers
achieve the voltage regulation and current sharing
proportionally and this is further extended to achieve the
convergence within finite time by [7][8].The PI controllers are
used in all the control circuits. The droop parameters are
responsible for reducing the errors and power losses in order
to improve the accuracy of current sharing [9][10]. By
considering the virtual complex impedance in the droop
————————————————
 Chalasani Sri Sai Amrutha, Final year student, B.V. Raju institute of
Technology, Narsapur, Telangana, India. chrkpssamrutha@gmail.com
 Kanugula Rebeca, Final year student, B.V. Raju institute of Technology,
Narsapur, Telangana, India. Kanugula.rebeca@gmail.com
 S.Saravanan, Department of EEE, B.V.Raju Institute of Technology,
Telangana, India. saravananklu@gmail.com
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equation, current sharing is improved and the stability of the
microgrid is also increased.In the case of droop control,
communication links are avoided and therefore provide
significant flexibility and high reliability. It can be concluded
that the distributed control strategy is used to warrant accurate
current sharing[11].The Load terminal voltages are important
in order to maintain (preserve) the output voltage within the
boundaries of the nominal value. If there is a large difference
in terminal voltage of the load from each converter, there is no
power flow [11].There should be no large variations in the
output voltage because it causes problems in the power
quality, which means less accurate current sharing[12][13].The
main objective of the research paper is i) Modelling and
analysis of DC Microgrid ii) A distributed control strategy for
average voltage regulation and iii) Understanding the
hierarchical control and current sharing for a distributed
Energy Resources. In order to achieve the above objectives,
distributed controllers at secondary control level are proposed
on the basis of a hierarchical control structure.
2 SYSTEM ARCHITECUTRE
A DC microgrid has three important layers, they are, DER
(Distributed energy resource) layer, control layer,
communication layer. A number of energy sources in the
Distributed Energy Resource (DER) layer are considered to
be a network through a cascaded DC-DC converter in series
with LC filters is shown in figure 1. All four energy sources are
connected in parallel. Each DC-DC converter has its own
primary and secondary controllers. The gate pulse is triggered
by the Pulse Width Modulation technique and is fed to the DC-
DC converters (boost). The primary controller allows drooping
characteristics for power sharing and is accomplished using
distributed control systems that boost terminal DC voltage and
current sharing. The secondary controller maintains the
voltage value within required boundaries even when primary
controller causes deviations in voltage and also maintains
equivalent current sharing of all the Distributed energy
resources. All primary and secondary controllers use PI
controllers. The view of the neighbor is interpreted on the
basis of the existence of a communication link between the
Distributed Energy Resources pair (DERs). These links make
it possible to communicate similar local current and
determined average voltage to the neighbors and thus to
achieve unity among all DERs. The Detailed information on
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the control and communication layers can be found in the

control philosophy in Figure 2. The KP, KI values of voltage

and current controller are totally based on trial and error Battery parameters
methods. We took almost 100 possible values and figured Battery used : lithium ion
these are the suitable ones. Nominal voltage = 220V
Filter Rated capacity = 6.5 Ah
Initial SOC = 100%
+
Battery DC Vdc= 380V Battery response time = 0.1 seconds
C1
- DC PWM generator switching frequency = 20e3 Hz
Boost Gain : Rd = 0.03.
Filter Secondary voltage controller ,
+ Kp = 0.5
Battery DC KI = 20
C2
- DC Current sharing controller,
Boost Kp = 0.02
Filter L KI =1
+ o Inner current controller,
Battery DC a
C3 d Kp =0.1
- DC
KI = 25
Boost
Filter Output voltage and power sharing,
Vdc = 380V
+
Battery DC Pdc = 2000W
C4
- DC
Boost 3 CONTROL PHILOSOPHY
Control Scheme
The below control philososphy consists of the following blocks
Fig. 1. Architecture of DC Microgrid (islanded mode). such as inner current controller, voltage controller, secondary
voltage controller, current sharing controller. The
There are four batteries each have their own boost converter communication network used for the generation units is also
and each converter has its input fed by the controllers namely, shown below.
primary and secondary controllers. The specifications are
mentioned below:
Fig.2. Block diagram for control philosoph

As shown in the figure 2, the communication between the and current controller loop. The output of the control circuit
controllers is maintained. The Rd drop parameter is added shall be fed to the PWM. A pulse is generated using PWM
to the outputs of the secondary voltage controller and the to give input to the boost converter.
current sharing controller and is fed to the primary voltage
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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCIENTIFIC & TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH VOLUME 9, ISSUE 03, MARCH 2020 ISSN 2277-8616

vn + ∫ ∑m∈N anm (v̂m − v̂n ) (1) units as shown below in the graph using the above
described scheme. The battery nominal voltage is kept
∫ ∑m∈N anm (îm − în ) (2) same for all the generation units.

Inner current controller and voltage controller comes under

primary control scheme. The input for inner current loop
comes from voltage loop accompanied by primary droop
whereas, droop is achieved from ird loop.
∆v
Where, rd = i
Where Vmax, Imax are maximum voltage variation and
maximum output current. The mathematical equations of
the primary controller are given as follows:

d∅
= v ∗ − rd i − v; (3)
dt
iL ∗ = K pv (v ∗ − rd i − v) + K iv ∅v
Fig. 3. Output voltage at 380V.

d∅ Each colour indicates one converter as shown in the

= iL ∗ − iL ; d = K pi (iL ∗ − iL ) + K ii ∅i (4)
dt
The main objective of the secondary controller is to control
and maintain the voltage within the limits achieved by
obtaining the set point voltage for all connected converters.
The set point voltage is obtained as in the equation 5,
graph. All the output voltages are maintained constant.
3.2 Case 1: Current Sharing
The current for the units is maintained equal as shown in
the below graph using the above mentioned scheme. The

vn ∗ = Vnom + ∆vv n + ∆v (5)

Where, the voltages in the equation are obtained from

secondary controller. The mathematical equations of
secondary controller are,
d
= Vnom − v̂; ∆vv = K p v (Vnom − v̂) + K i v φv (6)
dt

d
= î − i; ∆vi = K p i (î − i) + K i v φi (7)
dt

Whereas, the inputs voltage and current are obtained from

the equation 1 and 2.
From equations 1 and 2, calculate the mean voltage and battery nominal voltage is kept same for all the generation
current sharing value for each DER using the information units.
obtained from neighbors and its own respective voltage and
current measurements. The overall nominal microgrid
voltage is obtained by comparing estimated and nominal Fig. 4. Current sharing
system voltage. Similarly, equal current sharing is achieved
by comparing the estimated and output current of each When circuit breaker comes into picture these are the
DER individually. results obtained.

3.3 Case 3: Voltage regulation (with circuit breaker)

3 SIMULATION RESULTS:
A 380V Direct Current Microgrid with four DERs was
developed using matlab / Simulink software. The below are
the graphs of voltage regulation and current sharing.
3.1 Case 1: Voltage regulation
The dc voltage is maintained at 380V for all the connected
The switching time for the circuit breaker is given at t = 4s.
The voltage has some deviations at that particular time and
comes to its initial stage as shown in the below graph. So,
this is basically a load change condition. The deviations at
t=4s occur for about 0.4s.

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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCIENTIFIC & TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH VOLUME 9, ISSUE 03, MARCH 2020
Fig. 5. Output voltage when circuit breaker is present. (When additional
load is added)
3.4 Case 4: Current sharing (with circuit breaker)
At the switching time t = 4s, the current sharing increases to
a certain value corresponding to the load change given.
After the load change also the current sharing is maintained
equal for all the units as shown.
Fig. 6. Current sharing when circuit breaker is present(when additional
load is added)
4 BENEFITS & OUTCOME OF THE WORK
 Distributed control of dc microgrids can remove the
dependency of central controllers which requires a
high bandwidth communication links. Moreover,
central controller have single point of failure issues
and also requires high computational algorithms.
 Distributed control helps in current sharing among the
converters.
5 CONCLUSION
A approach regarding current sharing between battery units
is discussed. A distributed controller is proposed to offer
voltage regulation and current sharing, which is a highly
flexible reliable and efficient operation for dc microgrid with
islanding condition. A primary controller and secondary
controllers are used for effective operation. Where, PI
controllers are used in the control circuit. A droop parameter
is also added for obtaining better results. Two cases: with
and without circuit breaker are considered. Therefore, the
IJSTR©2020
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ISSN 2277-8616
distributed control strategy, which involves a voltage
controller and a droop-based current controller, thus
provides a compromised control for voltage regulation and
current sharing because it eliminates power loss and
increases device performance.
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