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3, MAY/JUNE 2013
AbstractThe coexistence of ac and dc subgrids in a hybrid the grid-connected mode too if the mains grid is no longer
microgrid is likely given that modern distributed sources can infinite, probably caused by a significant increase in microgrid
either be ac or dc. Linking these subgrids is a power converter, capacity [3][5]. Regardless of its nature though, the voltage
whose topology should preferably be not too unconventional. This
is to avoid unnecessary compromises to reliability, simplicity, and and frequency of an islanded microgrid are negotiated by its
industry relevance of the converter. The desired operating features distributed sources, which might no longer be at their maximum
of the hybrid microgrid can then be added through this inter- power points if the loads are not large enough to absorb the
linking converter. To demonstrate, an appropriate control scheme generated power.
is now developed for controlling the interlinking converter. The Continuous tuning of the source outputs is thus needed and
objective is to keep the hybrid microgrid in autonomous operation
with active power proportionally shared among its distributed can be achieved with or without external communication links
sources. Power sharing here should depend only on the source [6]. The former is usually viewed as less reliable since any link
ratings and not their placements within the hybrid microgrid. The malfunctions will likely lead to instability. Communicationless
proposed scheme can also be extended to include energy storage or wireless control based on the classical droop operating
within the interlinking converter, as already proven in simulation principles is therefore preferred. Various methods have since
and experiment. These findings have not been previously discussed
in the literature, where existing schemes are mostly for an ac or a been proposed with [7] and [8] focusing on the line impedance
dc microgrid, but not both in coexistence. effect and output impedance design, respectively. Marwali et al.
[9] and Prodanovic and Green [10], on the other hand, con-
Index TermsAC microgrid, active power sharing, dc micro-
grid, droop control, hybrid microgrid. tributed by combining low bandwidth and droop control with
some considerations given to nonideal loads. More emphasis on
I. I NTRODUCTION nonideal load compensation could be found in [11] and [12],
followed by stability improvement of droop control found in
A MICROGRID is a small grid formed by grouping mul-
tiple distributed sources together to better merge their
advantages [1], [2]. The formed microgrid can either be con-
[13] and [14]. Other efforts include [15] where different load
placements were considered and [16] where different control
methods were discussed for multiple converters. These methods
nected to the mains grid or operated like an isolated island.
were mostly confined to an ac microgrid, which might not be
For the former, the voltage and frequency variations of the
the most efficient since modern sources and loads can either be
microgrid are fixed by the mains grid, which usually is treated
ac or dc.
as an infinite bus with much larger generation capacity. Because
Forming a dc microgrid [17] might therefore be of interest, as
of that, distributed green sources are more like controlled
reinforced by recent studies related to stability [18], industrial
current sources at their maximum power points. The energy
[19], commercial [20], [21], and offshore wind [22] applica-
thus generated would either be consumed by the local loads
tions of a dc grid. A dc microgrid is, however, not likely to
or channeled to the mains if there is a surplus. The scenario
replace an existing ac microgrid because of its long historical
would be different when islanded, which usually is linked to
development. A more likely architecture would hence be the
rural grids or any grids during faults. Strictly, it can represent
coexistence of ac and dc subgrids intertied by an electroni-
cally controlled power converter shown in Fig. 1. The formed
Manuscript received December 3, 2011; revised April 12, 2012; accepted
June 24, 2012. Date of publication March 12, 2013; date of current version
hybrid microgrid has so far not been studied for distributed
May 15, 2013. Paper 2011-IPCC-738.R1, presented at the 2011 IEEE Energy generation even though the same grid-connected and islanded
Conversion Congress and Exposition, Phoenix, AZ, USA, September 1722, control objectives would apply. They are, however, tougher to
and approved for publication in the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY
APPLICATIONS by the Industrial Power Converter Committee of the IEEE
realize, particularly for the islanded mode, where autonomous
Industry Applications Society. This project was supported by the Agency for operation demands controlling the interlinking converter ap-
Science, Technology and Research, Singapore, under the Intelligent Energy propriately. This unresolved challenge is now discussed with
Distribution Systems program.
P. C. Loh and D. Li are with the School of Electrical and Electronic
either capacitor or energy storage added to the dc link of the
Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 639798 (e-mail: interlinking converter.
epcloh@ntu.edu.sg; e080010@ntu.edu.sg).
Y. K. Chai is with the Singapore PowerGrid Ltd., Singapore 117438 (e-mail:
CHAI0054@ntu.edu.sg). II. D ROOP C ONTROL W ITHIN AC AND DC S UBGRIDS
F. Blaabjerg is with the Department of Energy Technology, Aalborg Univer-
sity, 9220 Aalborg, Denmark (e-mail: fbl@et.aau.dk). Mirroring classical synchronous generation theory, power
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. sharing among sources in an ac microgrid can be achieved by
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TIA.2013.2252319 droop control during the islanded mode. The droop control of
TABLE I
DEFINITIONS OF PARAMETERS IN FIG. 2 FOR AC SUBGRID, DC SUBGRID,
AND H YBRID M ICROGRID
B. DC Subgrid
Fig. 2. Generalized illustration of droop control for a two-source grid.
The droop control of the dc subgrid shown in Fig. 1 can
similarly be performed. The resulting scheme would compa-
a dc microgrid can also be done and was, in fact, tried nearly
rably be simpler because of the absence of reactive power and
two decades back [17] even though it has since been stagnant.
frequency. The axis assignments of those droop lines drawn in
These droop concepts are now reviewed since they are applied
Fig. 2 would then be in accordance to the second column of
to source control within individual subgrids of the proposed
Table I (x to active power and y to terminal voltage). In the
hybrid microgrid.
steady state, the dc network will force the dc source terminal
voltages to be close, but usually not equal because of different
A. AC Subgrid line impedances (Zd1 and Zd2 ) [17]. This mismatch causes
active power sharing error, which, in principle, is similar to the
Referring to the ac subgrid drawn in Fig. 1, the droop control reactive power sharing error experienced by the ac subgrid.
of its two sources is performed by applying those two droop
lines shown in Fig. 2. Units 1 and 2 in Fig. 2 then represent
III. C ONTROL OF I NTERLINKING C ONVERTER
ac sources 1 and 2, and for active power control, x and y
represent active power and frequency, respectively (see the Power converters have long been used for tying distributed
first column of Table I). In the steady state, the ac network sources to the grid. Their source-tying mechanisms are there-
naturally enforces a single common frequency f , which, in fore well established and hence not the topic of concern here.
Fig. 2, corresponds to the single horizontal dashed line drawn. Rather, the challenge is to design an autonomous control
This dashed line intersects the two droop lines at two steady- scheme for the interlinking converter whose responsibility is
state operating points, whose power values sum to give the total to link the ac and dc subgrids together to form the proposed
ac load demand exactly if only the ac subgrid is in existence. hybrid microgrid. The control objectives demanded here can
The power values are also in proportion to the ac source ratings better be visualized by grouping the ac and dc sources into two
if the droop coefficients or gradients of the droop lines (1 and consolidated sources tied to the same interlinking converter,
2 ) are set as like in Fig. 1. Quoting the ac subgrid in Section II-A as an
example, if the interlinking converter can be controlled to
1 Sa1 = 2 Sa2 (1) behave like the ac grid network, proportional active power
1376 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, VOL. 49, NO. 3, MAY/JUNE 2013
sharing can be enforced between the two consolidated sources, where the load change is triggered. Individual sources within
and hence their individual sources located within. each subgrid will also share active power proportionally since
So far, the existing literature has only tried to imitate syn- they are controlled by the established droop control method
chronous generator droop control using power converters. The reviewed in Section II.
idea of emulating the grid network using an interlinking con- The aforementioned sharing principles will, of course, re-
verter has never been tried before. The identification of this quire the interlinking converter to transfer active power between
analogy and its implementation with either dc-link capacitor or the two subgrids. The necessary amount PI is given by the
energy storage are therefore new contributions of this paper. output of the PI1 controller, which will be positive for dc-to-
Relevant details are now provided as follows. ac transfer and negative for ac-to-dc transfer. Reference PI can
next be converted to an active current command II,d for the ac
subgrid and another (II ) for the dc subgrid based on
A. General Methodology
II,d = 2PI /(3VI ); (II ) = PI /VI (3)
Recalling from Section II-A again as an example, droop
variables used by the ac sources must be of the same type where VI and VI are the voltage amplitudes sensed at the ac and
(ac frequency f ) before the ac grid network can force them dc terminals of the interlinking converter, respectively.
to be equal. The difficulty faced by the interlinking converter A reactive current command II,q
can further be determined
is thus the different droop variables used by the two consoli- by measuring the ac terminal voltage VI of the interlinking
dated sources (ac frequency f and dc terminal voltage VI in converter and then using it with the standard droop equation
Fig. 1). These variables must first be brought to a common per in (4) for determining QI and II,q
unit (p.u.) range like 1 to 1 or other preferred numbers by
applying the following two expressions: QI = (VI VI,max )/I ; II,q
= 2QI /(3VI ) (4)
f 0.5(fmax + fmin ) where I is the droop coefficient for reactive power sharing.
fpu =
0.5(fmax fmin ) The nonzero II,q
should only be used when active power trans-
VI 0.5(VI,max
+ VI,min ) fer reference PI is positive. For negative transferred power,
VI,pu = (2) II,q = 0 should be used instead for unity power factor opera-
0.5 VI,max
VI,min tion. The explanation for that can be found in [23] written by
the authors. The description there is equally applicable here for
where subscripts max and min have been added to represent reactive power sharing.
the upper and lower limits of the accompanied variable. The current references formed for the ac and dc terminals
The error of the normalized variables (fpu VI,pu ) can then of the interlinking converter can therefore be summarized
be passed to a proportional-integral (PI) controller, numbered as (II,d + jII,q ) and (II ) . The former can be tracked by
as PI1 in Fig. 3. In the steady state, the error input of the a synchronous PI2 controller since it is already in the dq
PI1 controller would be zero. That simply means that the two frame. The latter can be tracked by a PI3 controller, but
normalized variables have been equalized just like what the in the stationary frame. In theory, both controllers would keep
ac grid network would have naturally done in the ac subgrid. the tracking errors at zero, while yet maintaining simplicity.
The grid network analogy has hence been realized, allowing the The latter is certainly an advantage in terms of easier industry
two subgrids to share active power proportionally, regardless of acceptance. The described control scheme must, however, be
LOH et al.: AUTONOMOUS CONTROL OF INTERLINKING CONVERTER WITH ENERGY STORAGE IN MICROGRID 1377
Fig. 4. Topology and parameters of interlinking converter used in simulation and experiment.
Fig. 6. Simulated active and reactive power flows with energy storage added
to interlinking converter.
IV. S IMULATION R ESULTS
The simulation was performed in Matlab/Simulink using
building blocks from the PLECS libraries for assembling the is not important and will not affect the performance of the
network and converter shown in Figs. 1 and 4. The voltage proposed control scheme.
and current sensors added were oriented such that, when their A transient step was subsequently introduced to the modeled
sensed values were used to calculate active and reactive pow- system with its results shown in Fig. 6. A comprehensive
ers, positive power values corresponded to those directions overview of Fig. 6 could also be found in Table II, from which
indicated in Fig. 4. For the ac subgrid, its total ratings were a few important observations were described as follows.
chosen as 10 kW and 5 kVAr over the ranges of 49 Hz f
51 Hz and 255 V VI 270 V. The voltage range chosen Before Transient, t = 0 to 0.4 s
was mainly based on the assumption that standard 600 V
AC and dc loads were initially set as {9 kW, 5.2 kVAr}
semiconductor switches (or 1200-V switches if a safety margin
and 2 kW, respectively.
of two was preferred) and hence a dc-link voltage of 600 V were
Since the dc subgrid was underloaded, the interlinking
used. The decided range then gave a modulation index range
converter automatically drew 5 kW from it. Out of this
of 0.85 M 0.9 (M = VIK /300), which was quite typical
amount, 2 kW was passed to the ac subgrid with the
in practice. Individual source ratings within the subgrid were,
remaining 3 kW used for storage charging.
however, not explicitly given here since the main intention was
Storage charging was appropriate since the total load
more to demonstrate correct active power flow through the
demand was only 11 kW out of a total source genera-
interlinking converter, and not within the subgrids.
tion capacity of 20 kW.
For the dc subgrid, its total rating was chosen as 10 kW
Each subgrid therefore correctly generated about
over the voltage range of 393 V VI 410 V. The ac and
7 kW for meeting the total load and storage demand.
dc subgrids studied therefore had the same rating, which in
Reasonable reactive power sharing was observed with
practice could be other ratios depending on the types of sources
the ac subgrid and interlinking converter, producing
and operating conditions considered. The subgrids were then
3.2 and 2 kVAr, respectively.
intertied by a converter rated at 8 kW and 2 kVAr with a
3 kW energy storage at its dc link. Ratings of the converter After Transient, t > 0.4 s
were mainly decided by the amount of power that the ac and
dc subgrids agreed to share. Their values were therefore always AC and dc loads were changed to {8 kW, 5 kVAr} and
smaller or equal to those of the lowest rated subgrid. The 11 kW, respectively.
formed microgrid was eventually tied to a dc load and a three- The dc subgrid was loaded more, prompting the in-
phase ac load, whose power demands were spelled later, while terlinking converter to inject 2 kW into it. Of this
describing the simulation results. This load arrangement was amount, only 1 kW was drawn from the ac subgrid.
planned mainly for testing purposes. In practice, load placement The remaining 1 kW was discharged from the storage.
LOH et al.: AUTONOMOUS CONTROL OF INTERLINKING CONVERTER WITH ENERGY STORAGE IN MICROGRID 1379
After Transient
V. E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS
A scaled-down experimental setup was built for testing the
proposed control scheme. For full verification, the number of
waveforms monitored simultaneously was enormous and was
therefore tough to show in a synchronized series of plots.
Because of that, only active power flows and their related
voltage and current waveforms were shown. That was not
restrictive since the main intention of this paper was to prove
the proportional active power sharing between the subgrids. The
number of waveforms monitored was eventually reduced to 11
and was displayed using three four-channel digital scopes.
Returning to the physical setup, the ac subgrid was emulated
with a droop-controlled dcac inverter having a power rating of
1.2 kW and a frequency range of 47 Hz f 51 Hz. The dc
subgrid, on the other hand, was realized with a programmable
dc power supply programmed with a rating of 1 kW and
a voltage range of 180 V VI 200 V. The experimental
Fig. 7. Simulated voltages and currents for transient event shown in Fig. 6. frequency and voltage ranges were generally set wider than
those in simulation because of noises unintentionally picked
Storage discharging was appropriate since the total up by the experimental system. The noises can be reduced
load demand of 19 kW was near the total source in practice with better shielded sensors and surrounding. The
generation capacity of 20 kW. ratings of the subgrids were also intentionally set different to
Each subgrid therefore correctly produced about reflect their different kilowatt generations in the steady state.
9 kW for meeting 18 kW of the load (19 kW in Their p.u. values, normalized with respect to their ratings, were,
total). The remaining 1 kW demanded by the load was however, still equal because of the implemented proportional
discharged from the storage. active power sharing.
Since active power was flowing into the ac terminal Linking the subgrids was an interlinking converter, whose
of the interlinking converter, it produced no reactive configuration was shown in Fig. 4. At its dc link was a battery
power according to Section III-A. storage governed by those expressions in (6). The parameters
Relevant voltage and current waveforms measured at the ac chosen for (6) were PS,min = 0.3 kW, PS,max = 0.375 kW,
and dc terminals of the interlinking converter were also plotted and I = 2.25 kW. With this setup, 11 waveforms were plotted
in Fig. 7. Observations noted from there were summarized as in Fig. 8, whose meanings and represented variables in Fig. 4
follows. were clarified as follows.
1380 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, VOL. 49, NO. 3, MAY/JUNE 2013
Fig. 8. Experimentally captured waveforms for hybrid acdc microgrid (refer to third paragraph of Section V for description of each waveform).
1) Upper plot: C1 ac subgrid source power (P ),1 C2 panying PS was caused by the fixed reverse orientation of
ac terminal voltage of interlinking converter (VI ), C3 the current sensor found in the battery.
ac current flowing out of interlinking converter (II ), and 3) Lower plot: C1 dc terminal voltage of interlinking
C4 ac load current. converter (VI ), C2 dc subgrid source power (PD ), C3
2) Middle plot: C1 dc-link voltage (VI ), C2 ac power dc power flowing into interlinking converter (PI ), and
flowing out of interlinking converter (PI ), and C3 C4 dc load current.
negative battery power (PS ). The negative sign accom-
[18] F. Mura, C. Meyer, and R. W. De Doncker, Stability analysis of high- Ding Li received the B.Sc. degree in electrical
power dc grids, IEEE Trans. Ind. Appl., vol. 46, no. 2, pp. 584592, engineering from Wuhan University, Wuhan, China,
Mar./Apr. 2010. in 2007 and the M.Sc. degree in power engineering
[19] M. E. Baran and N. R. Mahajan, DC distribution for industrial systems: from Nanyang Technology University, Singapore, in
Opportunities and challenges, IEEE Trans. Ind. Appl., vol. 39, no. 6, 2008, where he is currently working toward the Ph.D.
pp. 15961601, Nov./Dec. 2003. degree.
[20] A. Sannino, G. Postiglione, and M. H. J. Bollen, Feasibility of a dc From July to October 2009, he was a Visiting
network for commercial facilities, IEEE Trans. Ind. Appl., vol. 39, no. 5, Scholar with the Institute of Energy Technology,
pp. 14091507, Sep./Oct. 2003. Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark. His research
[21] D. Salomonsson and A. Sannino, Low-voltage dc distribution system for fields include multilevel inverters, Z-source invert-
commercial power systems with sensitive electronic loads, IEEE Trans. ers, renewable energy interfacing technology, and
Power Del., vol. 22, no. 3, pp. 16201627, Jul. 2007. current source inverters.
[22] C. Meyer, M. Hing, A. Peterson, and R. W. De Doncker, Control and
design of dc-grids for offshore wind farms, IEEE Trans. Ind. Appl.,
vol. 43, no. 6, pp. 14751482, Nov./Dec. 2007.
[23] P. C. Loh and F. Blaabjerg, Autonomous control of distributed storages Yi Kang Chai received the B.Eng. degree in electri-
in microgrids, in Proc. IEEE ICPE, 2011, pp. 536542. cal and electronic engineering from Nanyang Tech-
[24] Matlab Control System ToolboxUsers Guide, The MathWorks Inc., nological University, Singapore, in 2012.
Natick, MA, USA, 2012. He is currently working on the operation and
[25] H. H. Kuo, S. N. Yeh, and J. C. Hwang, Novel analytical model for maintenance of high-voltage distribution switch-
design and implementation of three-phase active power filter controller, gears, transformers, and cables with Singapore
Proc. Inst. Elect. Eng.Elect. Power Appl., vol. 148, no. 4, pp. 369383, PowerGrid Ltd., Singapore.
Jul. 2001.