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Voltage–current (V–I) droop control is becoming a promising alternative to achieve proper power sharing among the parallel-operated voltage-sourced inverters (VSIs). Compared with the conventional droop control, this method has a simpler structure and a better dynamic performance because it saves the power loop (including the low-pass filters). However, due to the absence of the power loop related to the system frequency, the synchronization of VSIs becomes an intractable issue. To tackle this, a communication-free algorithm to synchronize and control the VSIs is proposed. Initially, the principle of V–I droop control is presented straightforwardly based on the virtual impedance. Then, a synchronization algorithm is incorporated into the V–I droop controller for accurate power sharing. This algorithm adaptively adjusts the phase step of each VSI according to the phase differences between VSI and the ac bus. In this way, the phase differences of each VSI to the ac bus eventually converge to an identical value, thus realizing the synchronization of VSIs. A detailed parameter design method is also implemented considering both system stability and power quality. Finally, the proposed strategy is validated experimentally using a three-parallel-VSIs system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article brings forward a design method of virtual resistance for droop-controlled dc microgrids (DCMGs). Although droop control is widely employed in coordinated DCMGs to coordinate different energy sources, few works address thoroughly the principles for a proper virtual resistance design. In this article, dynamic stability and static voltage deviation constraints are taken into consideration as the main criteria to be complied with by the virtual resistance design. In critical cases, constant power loads (CPLs) may substantially decrease system damping and adversely affects the stability of the system. In this sense, the large-signal stability model is developed including CPLs by using the Lyapunov function, and it is subsequently analyzed to infer the stability criterion. Theoretically, bus voltage is the most important index when addressing the DCMG control; hence, the impact of virtual resistance on the voltage deviation is explored as well. The research presented in this article finds out that virtual resistance influence on system stability is opposite to that on voltage deviation; thus, a tradeoff method based on the containment principle is developed. Throughout the proposed compromised design, we can adjust the weight coefficient to satisfy different performance requirements of DCMGs. The effectiveness of the proposed scheme is validated through experimental results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the literature, many studies on stability analysis of dc microgrids have been conducted. However, most of them mainly focus on small-signal stability. On the other hand, few works analyze large-signal stability, but the major part of these works is based on a single unit or a simple cascaded system as a case study. Different from those, this article aims to address the large-signal stability analysis of a dc microgrid from a system-level perspective. First, the equivalent model of a droop-controlled dc microgrid is developed. Subsequently, the Lyapunov-based large-signal stability analysis and the stability criterion are derived, and mixed potential theory is used to make comparisons to verify the effectiveness of the derived criterion. The equilibrium point stability for different operation stages was obtained by means of theoretical calculation. Furthermore, the instabilities principle as well as their physical interpretation is revealed. In this article, the bus voltage is used as the only index to assess the microgrid power balance. Hence, the power load limit can be obtained by taking into consideration the stability and voltage deviation constraints. Finally, simulation and experimental results from a four-converter dc microgrid system verify the feasibility of the proposed theoretical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a decentralized current-sharing control strategy to endow fast transient response to paralleled dc–dc converters systems, such as dc microgrids or distributed power systems. The proposed controller consist of two main control loops: an external voltage droop control for current-sharing proposes and an internal current loop. The external droop control loop is designed as a voltage loop with embedded virtual impedance, which avoids the use of a slow voltage loop and a separate extra virtual impedance loop that may limit the system bandwidth. The internal current loop, thanks to the external control loop simplification, plays a major role in the system bandwidth, so that an adaptive proportional-integral (PI) controller is proposed for this matter. In the paper, two different droop control methods have been modeling, designed, simulated, and tested: The conventional virtual-impedance-loop based V–I droop and the proposed embedded-virtual-impedance based I–V droop. In order to compare the dynamic response performances between two droop controllers, their state-space models have been developed and analyzed in this paper. The results show that the dynamic response of the I–V droop control is faster than that of the conventional V–I droop control. Furthermore, by analyzing the effects from I–V droop control parameters, the errors can be reduced faster by enlarging the proportional terms, but with no fluctuations, and then completely eliminated by restoring back to small proportional values. Meanwhile, there exists a tradeoff phenomenon between the fast dynamic response and good steady-state performance; thus, an adaptive PI controller is proposed to both improve dynamic response and guarantee good steady-state performance simultaneously. Experimental results are shown to verify the accuracy of the models and the effectiveness of the proposed control framework. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]