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The stability of dual active bridge converter (DAB) is threatened when feeding the constant power loads (CPLs). This article proposes a deep reinforcement learning-based backstepping control strategy to solve this problem. First, a nonlinear disturbance observer is adopted to estimate the large-signal nonlinear disturbance. Then, a backstepping controller is used to stabilize the voltage response of the DAB under the large-signal disturbance. Finally, a compensation method based on deep reinforcement learning is developed to intelligently minimize output voltage tracking error and improve the operating efficiency of the system. The proposed controller can guarantee system stability under the large-signal disturbance of the CPL and achieve a fast dynamic response with accurate voltage tracking; it is more adaptive by using the deep reinforcement learning technique through the learning of its neural networks. The effectiveness of the proposed controller is verified by experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For isolated island dc microgrid connected with multidistributed energy storage, the initial state of charge (SOC) of energy storage is inconsistent and the power distribution of distributed energy storage unit (DESU) may be affected by the mismatched line impedance. Therefore, an adaptive droop coefficient control method based on virtual power rating is designed, which can quickly equalize SOC and eliminate the influence of mismatched line impedance. In the proposed control strategy, the arctangent function is introduced to combine the droop coefficient with the SOC of the energy storage unit, and the characteristic of the arctangent function is used to ensure the fast SOC equilibrium and limit the adaptive adjustment range of the droop coefficient. Considering the actual operating point together with the virtual operating point of the energy storage unit, the virtual power rating is used to construct the compensation term, which can automatically eliminate the output power deviation according to the line impedance difference of the DESU. In addition, the stability analysis is given theoretical support for the proposed control strategy. Finally, the reliability and effectiveness of the proposed strategy are verified by the RTLAB experiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although smart home has received wide attention in recent years, numerous scholars focus more on energy optimization strategy than energy dispatch hardware device (named energy router). Meanwhile, this energy router should have several features, i.e., high renewable energy utilization, energy multi-port and low volume. Thus, this paper designs a nine-port energy router regarding smart home and proposes a multimode hierarchical management strategy for this energy router. First, for the multi-port demand of wind, solar, storage and utilization, this paper presents a nine-port energy router to improve the renewable energy consumption and power supply flexibility. In addition, to reduce the volume of the energy router, a non-isolated AC/DC hybrid topology is constructed through embedding the integrated power electronic converters, which achieves the miniaturization of the energy router. In order to improve the renewable energy utilization rate, the decentralized module control is proposed for the components of energy router to provide the voltage and frequency support for system, and realizes the power sharing of distributed generations (DGs). Furthermore, the power exchange control with three-mode switching is proposed to guarantee the global energy flow balance under complex conditions. Eventually, the feasibility of the energy router is verified by the simulation and experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the proliferation of critical nonlinear loads in the islanded AC microgrids, the power quality improvement at the sensitive load bus (SLB) is a challenging task. To deal with this issue, a distributed event-triggered control strategy for the voltage harmonic compensation is proposed in this paper. By applying the proposed strategy, the distributed generator (DG) units can be employed in a distributed way to compensate for the harmonic voltage at the SLB. As a result, the power quality at the SLB is greatly improved. In addition, the suggested technique allows the SLB voltage to be measured by one or several dedicated DG units for the voltage harmonic compensation, which increases the system’s robustness. Furthermore, by applying the proposed event-triggered mechanism, the communication data is only sampled and transmitted among DG units when the predefined triggering condition is satisfied, which effectively alleviates the communication burden. Moreover, the stability and inter-event interval with the proposed control strategy are analyzed in this paper. Finally, several experimental case studies are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The DC solid-state transformer (DCSST) is a key component of the DC microgrid, and stability issues due to operation with constant power loads (CPLs) have become increasingly prominent. To stabilize the system of DCSST with CPLs, in this paper, a novel intelligent backstepping controller based on a nonlinear disturbance observer (NDO) is proposed, and the control coefficients of the backstepping control are automatically adjusted by an auxiliary deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG) controller. More specifically, the NDO estimates the large-signal nonlinear disturbance of the load power variation, and a backstepping controller is designed to improve the stability of the system under the estimated large-signal disturbance. Then, an input voltage equalizing compensator is added to ensure the identical input voltage to each sub-module of DCSST. Furthermore, a DDPG sub-controller is introduced into the backstepping control to intelligently adjust the control coefficients to improve the operating efficiency of the system. The results of the simulation and experiment show that the system is more robust due to the learning ability of the proposed controller, and the proposed controller can improve the stability of the system under the large-signal disturbance and intelligently ensure fast dynamic response with accurate tracking over different operating environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

State-of-charge (SoC) imbalance and bus voltage deviation are two of the main problems in autonomous dc microgrids. Based on this concern, this paper presents an improved dual-quadrant SoC weighted control strategy and a distributed optimization control method to achieve SoC balance, ensuring accurate power-sharing and bus voltage recovery. Firstly, this paper couples the injected/released power with the current SoC and observed average SoC value to weight the droop coefficient, which is based on the charge/discharge mode for the energy storage system. Then a secondary controller is designed based on distributed optimal control to eliminate the bus voltage deviation caused by the line impedance difference. The proposed optimal control method optimizes the average bus voltage to the nominal value and achieve accurate power-sharing by constructing the correlated variables and voltage independent intermediate variables exchanged among bulk energy storage units (ESUs). Since the voltage observer cannot accurately observe the true average bus voltage under the communication delay, the proposed distributed optimal control method without the voltage observer can ensure that the average bus voltage is optimized to the nominal value, thus improving the robustness of the control system. Finally, the correctness and effectiveness of the proposed method are verified in Simulink/MATLAB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Distributed renewable energy source is an advisable solution for dc microgrids to reduce fuel consumption and CO2 emission. In such microgrids, the installation of two or more battery energy storage (BES) units is utilized to compensate the power imbalance between the sources and loads. Nevertheless, energy management with numerous BES units does not simultaneously consider the impacts of distributed generators (DGs) and constant power loads (CPLs). Since the inaccurate current sharing will shorten the lifetime of the batteries and cause instability problem, this article proposes a distributed secondary $H_{\infty }$ consensus approach based on the dynamic event-triggered communication method to realize accurate current sharing and efficient operation in the presence of numerous DGs and CPLs. First, the whole state-space function model of the dc microgrid consisting of DGs, batteries, resistive loads, and CPLs, is first built in detail. This model is further transformed into standard linear heterogeneous multiagent systems, which provides an indispensable preprocessing for advanced control strategy application. Then, the distributed secondary $H_{\infty }$ consensus approach based on the foresaid systems is designed to achieve accurate current sharing. For reducing the communication among batteries and the controller updating frequency, the dynamic event-triggered communication method is proposed. Compared with existing event-triggered methods, the communication and controller updating frequency of the proposed dynamic event-triggered method have been reduced a lot. Additionally, the proposed method can not only avoid the Zeno behavior, but also obtain the lowest bound of the sampled time interval. Finally, the numerical simulation results and experimental results verify the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the voltage feedforward control based on the point of common coupling (PCC) has been widely studied in the grid‐connected inverters to suppress the harmonics in the grid current, harmonic instability still occurs when the PCC voltage contains a series of background harmonics under weak grid condition. To this end, this paper applies the grid voltage sensed by phasor measurement units instead of the PCC voltage for feedforward. Meanwhile, considering that coupling between the phase‐locked loop (PLL) and the grid impedance would cause instability under weak grid condition, a novel compensation term is introduced to eliminate the negative influence of PLL. In addition, a method to improve the transient response of the system is also proposed so that the cut‐off frequency does not change with the impedance of the grid. By analysing the output impedance of the system, it can be proved that the strategy proposed can effectively improve the stability of the system. The experimental results indicate that the harmonics in the grid current are obviously reduced and the dynamic performance of the system is improved, which verifies the analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Renewable energy is an advisable choice to reduce fuel consumption and $\rm CO_{2}$ emission. Therein, wind energy and solar energy are the most promising contributors to reach this goal. Although the hybrid wind/solar system has been widely studied, the real-time current sharing based on their maximum capacities is rarely achieved in terms of seconds. Based on this, this paper proposes an accurate current sharing and voltage regulation approach in hybrid wind/solar systems, which is based on distributed adaptive dynamic programming approach. Firstly, the equivalent wind/solar model is built, which is an indispensable preprocessing to achieve the complementary between wind energy and solar energy. Therein, the wind energy and solar energy can output relative current according to their respective capacity ratio, which ensure the maximum utilization ratio of renewable energy source. Furthermore, current sharing and voltage regulation problem is switched into optimal control problem. Under this effect, each source agent aims to obtain the optimal control variable and achieve accurate current sharing/voltage regulation. Moreover, an adaptive dynamic programming approach based on Bellman principle is proposed. It can achieve accurate current sharing and voltage regulation. Finally, the simulation results are provided to illustrate the performance of the proposed adaptive dynamic programming approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the attack signal injection on the DC microgrid system, voltage regulation and current sharing cannot be guaranteed and the overall system may even be destabilized. To solve this problem, a generalized extended state observer (GESO)-based distributed attack-resilient control method is proposed for DC microgrids in this paper. The presented control scheme can detect and mitigate the unknown dc/low-frequency/grid-frequency attack signals while achieving voltage regulation and accurate current sharing among distributed generation (DG) units. In addition, benefiting from employing the proposed distributed control strategy, the information exchange among the DG units is updated in an aperiodic way. As a result, the communication burden of the DC microgrid communication network can be greatly reduced. The stability of the proposed method is verified by the Lyapunov function, and no Zeno behavior will exist. Finally, the experimental results are illustrated to validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The improvements in signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) are indispensable to obtain the desired output signal of partial discharge (PD) under square wave pulsewidth modulation (PWM) voltage. In this article, the effect of complex PWM voltage parameters (rise time, fall time, frequency, duty cycle) on the SNR of PD tests is investigated. The results revealed that the sensor's high-frequency gain should be increased to improve the SNR under faster switching. PD impulses are more likely to be submerged in the residual interference under high-frequency voltage. The SNR can be improved by only detecting the PD at the rising front because the PD signal overlaps with commutation noise at the falling front of short duty cycle voltage, such as 0.03% duty cycle. The above results can reference the PWM parameters and improve the SNR in PD tests for rotating machines controlled by power electronics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rapid development of microgrids, voltage drop has become one of the focuses on the research of microgrid stability and grid-connected operation. In this article, an improved fuzzy voltage compensation control strategy (FVCC) is proposed to solve the bus voltage drop problem. This method takes the influence of feeder impedance into account, and there is no need to accurately measure the feeder impedance value. Since droop control and feeder impedance can lead to voltage drop and bus voltage instability, fuzzy control is applied to compensate bus voltage. Specifically, aiming at the voltage drop caused by droop control, an adaptive fuzzy controller is designed to automatically find suitable gain parameters to reduce the voltage difference. In addition, bus voltage gain module is added to compensate the voltage consumed by feeder impedance. The compensation only needs to measure the voltage at both ends of the line, without testing the line parameters. Finally, the simulation results show that the control strategy achieves the expected effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the droop control applied in islanded DC microgrids, DC bus voltage recovery, and current sharing cannot be guaranteed simultaneously. To solve this problem, a distributed dynamic event-triggered control method is proposed in this paper. The presented control scheme can remove DC bus voltage deviation while achieving the current sharing among distributed generation (DG) units. In addition, the proposed method requires no global information, and only the DC bus voltage from the physical network is needed. Moreover, the data of neighboring DGs at only event-triggered times are involved, which greatly reduces the communication burden of the DC microgrid communication network. The stability of the proposed method is demonstrated through the Lyapunov function, and Zeno behavior can be excluded as well. Finally, the experimental results with four case studies are presented to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposed a distributed uniform controlstrategy for parallel bidirectional interlinking converters(BICs) to realize resilient operation of hybrid ac/dc microgrid (HMG). The proposed control strategy can coordinate the control objectives of BICs in different HMG operation modes with a uniform control structure, thus, to eliminate any mode transition detections. In normal condition, the power coordination between ac and dc subgrids can be achieved, while ac or dc voltage regulation can be maintained when main voltage source(MVS) fails in ac or dc subgrid. The coordination between parallel BICs relies on low-bandwidth neighbourhood communication. With the communication planned, accurate power sharing can be achieved. Communication fault ride-through capability is enabled with less power sharing accuracy. The system reliability and resilience of HMG under various fault conditions can be improved by the proposed control strategy. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy, the controller hardware-in-the-loop experiment results have been provide in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modular multilevel converters (MMCs) in high-voltage dc applications usually adopt a distributed control architecture to manage a large number of submodules (SMs) through a communication network. The communication congestion and network disconnection might lead to communication interruption (CI) and eventually cause the system to malfunction. In this article, a resilient operation strategy is proposed and studied to ride-through the CI fault, in order to prevent frequent fault SM bypassing, replacement, or even system shutdown. The analysis of the MMC distributed control system with the presence of CI indicates that the insertion index of the faulted SM might become constant, which distorts the output current and results in overvoltage of the communication interrupted SM (CI-SM). The CI-SM capacitor voltage prediction can be used to determine the MMC safe operation period after CI occurs. During the safe operation period, the CI-SM power balance is sustained by utilizing prestored phase signals to generate a sinusoidal insertion index according to its capacitor voltage tracking error. Two operation modes are proposed and analyzed to ensure the MMC stable operation under various conditions. The system protection is sensibly used only if the CI duration exceeds a safe operation period, which avoids frequent SM cut-off. Good agreement of the CI-SM capacitor voltage is achieved between the theoretical and simulation results. The effectiveness and robustness of the proposed MMC resilient operation are experimentally confirmed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes a circulating current and second harmonic current (SHC) suppression method by introducing virtual impedance into the circulating current and output current feedback control loops of the dc solid-state transformer (DCSST). The virtual impedance is employed to adjust impedance in the circulating current feedback control loop to decrease the circulating current when the transmission efficiency of each dual active bridge is different. And a SHC suppression method, which introduces the virtual impedance containing a bandpass filter, is adopted to reduce the SHC and improve the dynamic performance of the DCSST. Moreover, a relatively independent modular control method, which is conducive to the modular expansion of the DCSST, is proposed. Compared with traditional DCSST control methods, the proposed method can simultaneously realize the output current sharing and effectively reduce the SHC with modular control. Finally, a DCSST prototype is built and the results of the experiment verify the validity and effectiveness of the proposed control strategy and solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A decentralized improved I-V droop control strategy for battery-supercapacitor (SC) hybrid energy storage system (HESS) is proposed in this paper. The dynamic power sharing between battery and SC is realized by replacing the constant droop coefficient in I-V droop control with virtual impedance, i.e. virtual inductance for battery side converter and virtual resistance for SC side converter. Besides, by injecting the virtual inductance in the battery side converter, negligible DC bus voltage deviation can be achieved without extra voltage compensator. Moreover, the state-of-charge (SoC) recovery is also considered to extend the service life of the HESS. Furthermore, in the proposed regulated power system, since the power allocation, DC bus stability and SoC recovery are decoupled from each other, the design of control parameters is simple. The corresponding design guideline is demonstrated in this paper. Finally, to verify the accuracy and feasibility of the theoretical analyses, hardware in the loop simulations have been conducted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the off-grid microgrid cluster, the energy storage device is mainly charged and discharged to maintain the stability of the bus voltage and the system power balance. Generally, the voltage and current double closed-loop control and fuzzy control are adopted for the energy storage converter. The traditional double closed-loop control parameters and the scale factor and quantization factor in fuzzy control cannot be adjusted in real time during system operation, resulting in slower dynamic response and weak anti-interference ability of the system. In response to the above problems, this paper proposes an adaptive genetic fuzzy double closed-loop control, which can adjust the PI control parameters in real time by adjusting the quantization factor and the scale factor to optimize the control effect. The simulation platform is built in MATLAB/Simulink and the simulation results show that the adaptive genetic fuzzy double closed-loop control combines the advantages of fuzzy and PI control. Under different working conditions, the system has not only a fast dynamic response, small overshoot, and strong anti-interference ability but also good robustness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In dc microgrid, energy storage system (ESS) plays a crucial role to provide short-or-long term and high-quality electric energy. The different control strategies for bidirectional dc-dc converter (BDC) of ESS in grid-tied and islanded modes pose challenges to the coordination control of the dc microgrid. This paper proposes an autonomous control scheme for the BDC in dc microgrid. The proposed control scheme is based on $V^2-P$ droop control and unifies bus voltage regulation and power regulation in a single control structure. Thus, global smooth transition between various operation modes can be achieved without any control strategy changes, which avoids various mode switch detection mechanisms and improves system stability. Furthermore, the proposed control scheme is fully decentralized which reduces the reliance on communication, and enhances the reliability of the microgrid. On the other hand, $V^2-P$ droop approach eliminates the negative effect of widespread constant power loads (CPLs) in dc microgrid. The stability of the proposed control method is illustrated, and the design guideline of some critical control gains is addressed. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme is validated by the real-time hardware-in-loop (HIL) platform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A novel single-phase pulsewidth modulation (PWM) direct ac–ac converter based on two-level nondifferential dual-buck ac chopper legs with inverting and noninverting operations is first proposed in this article. It has the ability to resolve both voltage sag and swell problems at the same time when used as distributed flexible voltage conditioner. Compared to the traditional ac–ac converter, it has much enhanced system reliability thanks to no shoot-through problems even when all switches of each ac chopper legs are turned on, and therefore, the PWM dead time is not needed leading to improve the utilization of the duty cycles. Only half of the switches in the proposed converter is switched at high frequency during a switching period at most, which significantly reduces the total switching loss. In particularly, the converter has two greatest advantages that it retains the common sharing ground of the input and output and has the same buck/boost operation process for noninverting and inverting modes. In order to fully testify the performance of the proposed converter, a 500-W experimental prototype is built and tested at different conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hybrid fuel cell/supercapacitor (FC/SC) system is a promising onboard power supply system for more electric aircraft (MEA), where system stability is a critical issue due to the high penetration of constant power loads (CPLs) in MEA. This article proposes a composite finite-time controller for decentralized power sharing and stabilization of the hybrid FC/SC system with CPLs. It consists of an integral droop (ID) + finite-time controller for the SC converter and a proportional droop (PD) + finite-time controller for the FC converter. First, the coordination of PD and ID achieves decentralized power sharing between FC and SC such that SC only compensates fast fluctuations and FC provides smooth power at the steady state. Then, a finite-time observer is designed to provide feedforward compensation for the disturbances and enables accurate tracking with fast dynamics. Finally, a composite finite-time controller is constructed following a nonrecursive synthesis procedure with a rigorous large signal stability analysis. The proposed controller guarantees finite-time convergence even under large signal variations and can be easily implemented with a practical gain tuning procedure. Simulations and experiments are conducted to verify the proposed technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the current sharing and voltage regulation problem of a DC microgrid by a distributed supervisory control method. In the existing secondary control methods, current sharing feedback control loop and voltage regulation feedback control loop are linearly integrated to shift the droop equation. However, the linear combination of two loops may easily offset the control effect of each other, as the control dimension is less than the objective dimension. This fact motivates us to design a distributed supervisory secondary control (DSSC) scheme to achieve a more flexible configuring of each converter. The DSSC consists of two candidate controllers and a supervisor. The two controllers refer to current sharing configuring and DC bus voltage regulation respectively, and the supervisor is to orchestrate the switching between candidate controllers based on the system environment of DC microgrid. Under the proposed DSSC, each converter selects to configure the current sharing or regulates the DC bus voltage according to its need. Theoretical stability analysis is rigorously conducted. Finally, both simulation and experiment results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of DSSC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the different characteristics of energy storages (ESs), proper dynamic power allocation to ESs in a hybrid energy storage system (HESS) is of high significance. To this end, integral droop (ID) controllers have been applied to a class of ESs (denoted as ES $_H$ s) with high ramp rates but low energy density. Conventional V-P droops have been adopted to regulate a class of ESs (referred to as ES $_L$ s) with high energy density but limited response speeds. Based on the cooperation of IDs and V-P droops, high/low frequency components of the load change can be autonomously responded to by ES $_H$ s/ES $_L$ s, thus possibly prolonging the HESS lifetime. However, existing works only focus on the small signal stabilization of HESSs, whose validity may only hold under certain equilibria. To address this issue, an original self-disciplined large signal stabilizing scheme is presented in this paper. Under this scheme, a compound stabilizer comprising disturbance observers and a backstepping controller is delicately designed for an ES-interfaced converter. The observers estimate the possible disturbances induced in the converter. Those estimations would be further neutralized by the backstepping controller, which simultaneously guarantees converter system stability in the large signal sense and drives the converter terminal voltage tracking the reference given by either the ID or V-P droop. Because of the proposed stabilizer, no communication happens in HESS, and the large signal stability of overall system can be spontaneously realized with rigorous mathematical proofs by Lyapunov techniques. This stabilizing scheme for HESS application is arguably reported for the first time in this article. A detailed parameter selection guideline is also provided. The effectiveness and feasibility of the compound stabilizer are verified by both simulations and hardware experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The penetration level of photovoltaic (PV) keeps increasing in modern distribution networks, which leads to various severe voltage limits violation problems. This article aims to aggregate and utilize the PV inverters for voltage regulation by a fully distributed two-level Volt/VAr control (VVC) scheme. In the lower-level VVC (real-time scale), the rooftop PV inverters are aggregated via consensus algorithms and then governed by droop controllers in medium-voltage networks. The droop controller adjusts the reactive power output of each PV aggregator in real-time from its dispatched value depending on the bus voltage variations. In the upper-level VVC (15-min timescale), the reactive power of PV aggregators is dispatched for power loss minimization, where control signals are set as base values for PV aggregators. This problem is formulated as second-order cone programming and solved by the alternating direction method of multipliers. The simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in both short-term and long-term scenarios with different system scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, a fixed and smooth-switch-sequence modulation strategy is proposed to equalize the dc-link voltages among the cascaded rectifier. The structure of a single-phase three-level neutral-point-clamped cascaded rectifier is studied. Three core steps of this strategy are analyzed respectively, including carrier wave disposition calculation, fixed pulse generator, and voltage rank function. In addition, a criterion of the degree of the load unbalance is established in order to measure the voltage balancing boundary of the presented approach. The superiorities of the proposed control strategy embody the smooth switch sequence, the strong voltage balance capability, as well as the fixed switch sequence. Owe to these advantages, the cascaded rectifier could effectively reduce the switching frequency, achieve the goals of voltage balancing, and reduce the calculation burden of the controller when the number of cascaded modules is large. The effectiveness of the proposed strategy is verified by simulation and experiment results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Power loss and voltage regulation are two fundamental and challenging issues in DC distributed generation system. In this paper, a multi-objective optimization problem is established to achieve trade-offs between reducing power loss and decreasing voltage deterioration by adjusting the weighting coefficients. This problem is proven to be a convex optimization under constant impedance load and constant current load. A distributed algorithm based on random coordinate descent method is developed to solve this problem without acquiring the information of line impedance. Thus, the optimal operating point of the system can be found automatically in real-time, and the deviation of optimal solution caused by the fluctuation of network parameters is avoided. In addition, the complexity of this algorithm is low and its computational requirement is reduced in practice. Finally, case studies are implemented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm under the scenarios of line parameter fluctuation, load variation, communication line failure, and plug-play capabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In low‐voltage power distribution systems with high penetration of photovoltaics (PVs) generation and electric vehicles (EVs), the over‐voltage problem arises at times because of large PV generation, and under‐voltage problem also arises sometimes because of simultaneous charging of massive EVs. Over‐ and under‐voltage problems lead to more difficulties in achieving voltage regulation. Demand response (DR) is expected to be promising and cost‐effective in promoting smart grids, and hence, the utilisation of flexible resources (FRs) through DR can be helpful for distribution system voltage regulation. This study introduces a hierarchical control structure of a community energy management system (CEMS) and multiple sub‐CEMSs to apply an FR‐based two‐stage voltage regulation technique. In the first stage, i.e. the day‐ahead scheduling stage, each sub‐CEMS optimises the FRs' schedules for minimising customers' electricity cost and network voltage violation times. In the second stage, i.e. the real‐time operation stage, the voltage sensitivity‐based FRs' shifting method is proposed to eliminate network voltage violations caused by errors of estimated day‐ahead data. The proposed models and methods are verified based on a realistic distribution system in Japan, where voltage violations, customer electricity cost and a number of on‐load tap changer tap operations are proved to be reduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The high penetration of power electronic converter loads in dc microgrid causes system stability issue, or also known as constant power load issue, due to their negative impedance characteristics. The stability concern will be more complicated for a self-disciplined microgrid that allows plug and play of various distributed generations (DGs). This article proposes a robust droop-based controller for decentralized power sharing in a dc microgrid considering large-signal stability. For each DG interface converter subsystem, the interactions with other DG interface converters and loads are estimated by a nonlinear disturbance observer (NDO) utilizing the subsystem's own information to achieve decentralized power sharing and fast voltage regulation. With the uncertainties of circuit parameters modeled as a lumped disturbance term and compensated by an NDO, the proposed controller can significantly enhance the robustness against the uncertainties of circuit parameters. The large-signal stability of the whole interconnected system is proved by the backstepping algorithm and Lyapunov theorem. The efficacy and large-signal stability of the proposed approach are verified by both simulations and experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a novel H-bridge structured ac–ac pulsewidth modulation (PWM) converter topology based on two-level non-differential ac chopper legs, which can work at the non-inverting and inverting modes for the utility voltage compensation. Compared to the traditional bipolar-type H-bridge ac–ac converter, no bidirectional switches are switched in a complementary manner to overcome the commutation problem due to the delayed response of electronic circuits and semiconductor switching devices. The detailed PWM control signals and operational principles are presented to regulate the output voltage in a bipolar manner. Especially the main advantage is that the proposed ac–ac converter has the same buck/boost operation process for non-inverting and inverting modes, which ensures the continuously average current supply to the low-voltage output side without a high-value capacitor to support power. Additionally, due to the common sharing ground of the input and output, the feature that output can reverse or maintain phase angle with input is supported well. Then, the detailed analysis, design conditions, and experimental verification based on a 1 kW experimental prototype are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bus voltage control is an essential issue in a DC microgrid (MG). In this paper, a decentralized composite controller (DCC) is proposed to unify two types of voltage controls, i.e., constant voltage mode and droop mode, and simultaneously realize global system large-signal stability of the MG. The main idea of the DCC is to partition the MG into dispatchable unit (DU) subsystems and the lumped load. A well-devised high gain observer is adopted to estimate the electrical coupling of a particular DU subsystem with other DUs and the load. Then, rather than dealing with the MG as a whole, the DCC is locally designed to offset the estimated coupling and stabilize the internal states of the DU subsystem. By doing so, each subsystem can be virtually decoupled from the MG and functions in an isolated fashion. When DU subsystems are interlinked, large-signal stabilization of the entire MG would be obtained by only guaranteeing the localized stability of individual subsystems. This stabilizing strategy has not been reported in the literature thus far. Relevant theoretical analyses are rigorously conducted by employing Lyapunov stability theorem. The effectiveness of the DCC has been verified by simulations. Experimentations show that the DCC enables faster system performance recovery and provides wider stability margin than the conventional PI controller. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Direct modulation principle is widely used in modular multilevel converters (MMCs) for its simplicity and natural stability. However, it results in strong active and reactive power coupling. This paper carefully analyzes and identifies four power coupling paths and two power influence factors with the direct modulation principle. Full power decoupling of the MMC can be realized by cutting off the derived coupling paths and compensating the influence factors. However, this will further deteriorate the already poor damping of the MMC and significantly increase dc-bus current fluctuations. To solve this problem, the sources resulting in poor damping are identified and then a new closed-loop dc-bus current controller is incorporated into the control system. Finally, the proposed power decoupling strategy with the newly designed current controller realizes completely decoupled power regulation, avoids overload operation, and obviously improves the dynamic performance of the MMC. Furthermore, it increases the stability of the MMC system under all possible operation conditions. The proposed control strategy is confirmed by experimental results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a compensation strategy to deal with both current and voltage measurement errors in the three-phase pulsewidth modulated rectifier system. The dc offset and scaling errors in the voltage and current measurements cause the injection of undesired dc and unbalanced currents into the three-phase input current and subsequently lead to voltage ripple at the dc output voltage. This paper proposes a compensation scheme for current measurement error where the dc offset and scaling errors in the current measurement are estimated from the characteristic of the dc output voltage ripple combining with simple band-pass and low-pass filters. Meanwhile, an advanced current controller designed with a proportional integral plus two resonant controllers tuned at the fundamental grid frequency $({{\omega _s}})$ and $2{\omega _s}$ in the synchronous (d–q) reference frame is suggested to reject the impact of the dc offset and scaling errors in the voltage measurement. The proposed compensation method is developed without the need of extra hardware circuit, sensor, or precise information of system parameters so that it can be considered as more cost-effective and robust solution. The effectiveness of the proposed solution is verified by experimental results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Linear droop control can realize power sharing among generators in dc microgrid (MG) without relying on critical communication links. However, the droop relationship between output power and voltage magnitude of renewable power generate system is nonlinear with uncertainties and disturbances from renewable sources and loads in practical dc MG. A novel droop scheme is proposed for an isolated dc MG to solve the nonlinear problem. The control strategy is proposed by using the Takagi–Sugeno (T–S) fuzzy model and sliding mode algorithm. The nonlinear droop characteristics can be represented by T–S model through taking advantage of locally measured output variables. The sliding mode droop controller is designed for compensating the uncertainties and disturbances to derive accurate power sharing based on T–S fuzzy model. The proposed scheme is proved to be effective under variable operating conditions through PSIM/MATLAB simulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

CLLC-type dc transformer (CLLC-DCT) is very popular in the hybrid ac–dc microgrid thanks to its high-power density advantage and good bidirectional power transfer capacity. In the hybrid ac/dc microgrid, the open-loop control is always utilized by the CLLC-DCT to cooperate with the bidirectional interlinking converter to realize the power and voltage conversion between the ac and dc bus. This paper first studies the circuit parameters design of the open-loop controlled CLLC-DCT with consideration of such a realistic problem: The real inductors/capacitors values are actually different with their theoretically designed values due to the operation power and temperature variation. To solve this problem, a robust circuit parameters design scheme is proposed for the CLLC-DCT in this paper. With the proposed scheme, the designed CLLC-DCT exhibits good power transmission and voltage regulation ability in the hybrid ac/dc microgrid even when its actual inductors/capacitors values vary with the practical power and temperature. The robust design method is experimentally verified in a hybrid ac/dc microgrid prototype. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transportation electrification involves the wide utilization of power electronics based dc distribution networks and the integration of a large amount of power electronic loads. These power electronic loads, when tightly controlled, behave as constant power loads (CPLs) and may cause system instability when interacting with their source converters. In this paper, a composite nonlinear controller is proposed for stabilizing dc/dc boost converter feeding CPLs by integrating a nonlinear disturbance observer (NDO)-based feedforward compensation with backstepping design algorithm. First, the model is transformed into the Brunovsky’s canonical form using the exact feedback linearization technique, to handle the nonlinearity introduced by the CPL. Second, the NDO technique is adopted to estimate the load power variation within a fast dynamic response, serving as a feedforward compensation to increase the accuracy of output voltage regulation. Then a nonlinear controller is developed by following the step-by-step backstepping algorithm with strictly guaranteed large signal stability. The proposed controller not only ensures global stability under large variation of the CPL but also features fast dynamic response with accurate tracking over wide operating range. Both simulations and experiments are conducted to verify the proposed strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existing power decoupling control method of modular multilevel converter (MMC) was developed from that of conventional two-level voltage source converters. Therefore, it cannot fully realize power decoupling due to neglecting the coupling effects from submodule capacitor voltage, dc current, circulating current as well as control strategies of circulating current, which inevitably results in inaccurate regulation of active and reactive power, deteriorated system dynamic performance, possible overload operation and eventually threatens the safety and stability of MMC. This paper analyzes the intercoupling among all electrical quantities and corresponding control strategies in MMC. An accurate control model of active and reactive power/current with four coupling paths and influence factors in the rotating frame is also established. A full power decoupling control method has been proposed based on the developed model. The proposed control method can realize accurate and completely decoupled active and reactive power regulation, avoid overload operation, and significantly improve the dynamic performance of MMC. Moreover, it facilitates the parameters selection of MMC controller with no extra cost, which is of great significance for practical projects. The effectiveness and accuracy of the proposed analysis and control methods were verified by both simulation and experimental results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a distributed secondary control scheme for accurate power allocation and voltage restoration in islanded dc microgrids. Conventionally the droop control function is employed in the primary control layer to realize power sharing among the distributed generators (DGs) in a decentralized fashion. However, the dc bus voltage may deviate from its nominal value due to different load profiles. In order to restore the dc bus voltage to its nominal value while maintaining the power sharing accuracy, a distributed control scheme is proposed in the secondary control layer. By using limited information of dc bus voltage and the secondary control inputs of their neighboring controllers, a distributed secondary control input can be designed and then sent to its corresponding primary controller. Besides, compared to most existing methods, no global information is required and only dc bus voltage feedback is needed. In addition, by employing the idea of pinning control, our proposed secondary control can be further simplified by only sending the dc bus voltage to one DG. An islanded dc microgrid test system is built in the MATLAB Simulink environment to validate our proposed method. An experimental prototype consisting of two DGs is designed to demonstrate the newly proposed approach and verify the obtained theoretical results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a uniform control strategy for the bidirectional ac/dc interlinking converter (BIC) in hierarchical controlled hybrid microgrid. The uniform control strategy unifies different control structures for multifunctional BIC in terms of power management, ac and dc voltage support. With the unified control structure, various triggering mechanisms for BIC mode-switch are not compulsory in response to the relevant scenario changes in the power network. Therefore, the negative consequences, such as unsmooth transition and system collapse due to the inaccurate or slower mode switch, can be avoided. Moreover, the uniform control strategy is also applicable for the hierarchical controlled hybrid microgrid, whose control architecture is typically comprised of the centralized and decentralized levels. This enables the communication fault ride-through capability and the impact from the communication failures can thus be mitigated. To sum up the above two features, the proposed control strategy is able to provide a smooth operation for the BIC without control mode switch in the event of unintentional scenario changes in power or communication network. To verify the validity of the proposed uniform control strategy, the controller hardware-in-the-loop experimental results have been provided in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Modularity and high reliability from redundancy are the two attractive advantages of modular multilevel converters (MMCs). This paper elaborates a switch open-circuit fault diagnosis and a fault-tolerant operation scheme for MMCs with distributed control. The proposed fault diagnosis and fault-tolerant control method can significantly improve the reliability of the MMC while maintaining the modularity of its software implementation. By distributing fault diagnosis into submodules, its local controller is capable of identifying the switching devices in open-circuit fault without extra hardware circuitry. Based on the real-time measurements of submodule terminal voltage and arm current, single, or multiple faulty switches can be identified within 3.5 ms without triggering faulty alarms. Furthermore, a new fault-tolerant operation is proposed to maintain the output current, internal dynamics, and switching harmonics unchanged after the faulty submodule is bypassed. This is achieved by resetting the period and phase registers in the local controller according to the information of bypassed submodules. The control loops of the MMC are not influenced by the proposed fault diagnosis and fault-tolerant operation, making the operation transition seamless and reliable. Experimental results show that fault identification and system reconfiguration can be completed within 5 ms, and the MMC can seamlessly and smooth ride through the switch open-circuit faults without severe malfunction and catastrophic damages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional centralized control strategies may reduce the flexibility and expandability of a modular multilevel converter (MMC) system. To tackle this issue, this paper proposes a distributed control architecture that is capable of assigning certain control tasks to distributed local controllers and improves the modularity of an MMC system. A central controller dealing with the output current regulation based on sensed arm currents is adopted. The control of MMC internal dynamics and the pulsewidth modulation (PWM) generation are distributed into local controllers. Unlike the conventional MMC control that needs all submodule capacitor voltages for capacitor voltage averaging, the proposed capacitor voltage control only relies on local submodule voltage measurement. Consequently, communication-intensive capacitor voltage transmission in each control cycle is not required and the communication burden of the control system can be significantly reduced. The control loops and possible control conflicts among submodules are presented and considered for system stability analysis. The effectiveness of the proposed distributed control architecture and capacitor voltage control for an MMC are confirmed by the start-up, steady state, and transient experimental results. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The dc offset and scaling errors in the voltage measurements cause the injection of undesired dc and harmonic currents into the three-phase output currents of the grid-connected inverter. This study proposes an enhanced current control scheme to eliminate the dc and harmonic currents caused by voltage distortion and voltage measurement error in three-phase grid-connected inverters. The proposed current controller is designed in the synchronous (d-q ) reference frame and composed of a proportional resonant (PR) controller and a repetitive controller (RC). The role of the RC is to regulate the grid current follow the reference value as well as compensate all 6\rmn\omega {\rm{s}} and (6\rmn\pm 2)\omega{\rm{s}}\,(n= 1,\,2,\,3,\ldots) harmonic components caused by distorted grid voltage and scaling errors. Meanwhile, the PR controller helps to compensate the dc current generated by dc offset measurement errors to guarantee that the three-phase grid currents are balanced and sinusoidal with extremely low dc component. Since the RC employed in the proposed current controller reduces to time delay by four times compared to the conventional RC, the proposed control system ensures good steady-state performance of the grid current without deteriorating its fast dynamic response. The effectiveness of the suggested solution is verified by various experimental tests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dc offset and scaling errors in the voltage and current measurements cause the injection of undesired dc and unbalanced currents into the three-phase input currents and subsequently lead to voltage ripple at the dc output voltage of the ac/dc converter. This paper proposes a compensation scheme for current measurement error where the dc offset and scaling errors in the current measurement are estimated from the voltage ripple characteristics of the dc output voltage ripple combining with simple band-pass and low-pass filters. Meanwhile, the dc offset and scaling errors in the voltage measurement can be rejected by using an advanced current controller developed with a proportional resonant plus a repetitive controller designed in the synchronous (d–q) reference frame. The proposed control algorithm is able to effectively reject the impact of both voltage and current measurement error so that the three-phase input currents are regulated to be balanced and sinusoidal with ultralow dc current component. Meanwhile, the dc output voltage is also well regulated to be pure dc with a negligibly small voltage ripple. The proposed compensation method is developed without the need of extra hardware circuit, sensor, or precise information of system parameters so that it can be considered as more cost effective and robust solution. The effectiveness of the proposed solution is verified by experimental results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A high-performance three-phase pulse width modulation (PWM) converter with reduced dc-link capacitor under unbalanced ac voltage conditions is proposed in this paper. The unique feature of the converter lies in that sinusoidal symmetrical ac currents and ripple free dc voltage can be achieved simultaneously without using a bulky capacitor, which was thought to be a dilemma in the past. The control scheme is implemented in an α–β frame, so the complex rotate transformations are avoided, and it does not require the extraction of positive and negative sequence currents, which simplifies the control algorithm. A two-quadrant operation active power compensator together with its controller is developed to suppress the voltage ripple in the dc-link. Compared with the passive compensation method, the compensator is equipped with a smaller capacitor to reduce the system size, weight, and cost. Moreover, the compensator could be integrated with the conventional three-phase three-leg PWM converter seamlessly. The effectiveness of the proposed control schemes is verified by the experiment results. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The traditional finite-control-set model predictive control (FCS-MPC) method for a cascaded H-bridge (CHB) rectifier has two main issues: heavy computational burden and low steady-state current performance. In this paper, a novel FCS-MPC method has been proposed for a single-phase CHB rectifier. The proposed method solves the optimization problem of FCS-MPC for one cell by one cell, like a “pipeline.” In the proposed method, the sampling period is divided into equal intervals by the number of cells. At the beginning of the first interval, the first cell selects its switching state to be applied. Then, the following cell selects its switching state to be applied at the beginning of next interval. Finally, the selected switching state of last cell will be applied at the beginning of the last interval. A cost function presenting the control objectives of common source current error and itself dc-link voltage error is evaluated for each cell. A single-phase three-cell CHB rectifier controlled by a DSpace DS1104 is tested and the experimental results show that a significant reduction in computational time, an improved steady-state current performance, and a comparable dynamic response are achieved in the proposed method in comparison with the traditional FCS-MPC method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to voltage mismatch between phase legs and the dc bus in modular multilevel converters (MMCs), the differential current in MMCs is inherently subjected to circulating even-order harmonics. Repetitive control based active harmonic suppression methods can be adopted to eliminate such harmonics. Nevertheless, conventional repetitive controllers have a relatively slow dynamic response, because all the sampled errors in the past one cycle have to be stored, which causes a response delay for one fundamental period. This paper proposes an improved repetitive control scheme that exclusively copes with even-order harmonics based on the circulating current characteristics of MMC systems. The design details of the even harmonic repetitive control scheme according to the harmonics characteristics are provided. The proposed even-harmonic repetitive control scheme requires halved data memory to store error samplings and the delay introduced by the repetitive controller is also reduced. According to the frequency domain analysis, the even-harmonic repetitive control features faster convergence rate, greater low-frequency gains, higher crossover frequency, and higher tolerance against system frequency deviation, while possessing the same even-order harmonics suppression capability and stability as conventional ones. Simulation and experimental results are presented to show the steady-state harmonics suppression capability, dynamic response, and disturbance tolerance of the proposed even-harmonic repetitive control scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modular multilevel converters (MMCs) are multi-input multi-output (MIMO) nonlinear systems. The control systems for MMCs are required to simultaneously achieve multiple control objectives, e.g., output current regulation, submodule capacitor voltage control, and circulating ripple currents suppression. Existing cascaded control strategies for MMCs achieve those control objectives with relatively complex controllers, and the controller parameter design is normally difficult for such nonlinear systems with highly coupled states. In view of this, a feedback linearization-based current control strategy is proposed for an MMC system in this paper. The nonlinear state function model of the MMC is presented and transformed to a linearized and decoupled form with the help of the input–output feedback linearization technique. Based on the linearized system, simple linear controllers are employed to regulate the output and inner differential currents of the MMC, which significantly reduces the difficulty in controller design. The stability of the proposed control strategy is analyzed. The experimental verification results show that, compared to the conventional cascaded control strategies for MMCs, the proposed feedback linearization control strategy is able to achieve improved steady-state and dynamic performances. The robustness of the proposed control strategy against parametric uncertainties is experimentally investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Due to the voltage fluctuation resulting from variable wind energy and reactive load change in an isolated wind-diesel hybrid system, an additional adaptive voltage compensation controller for static var compensator (SVC) by using double sliding-mode (SM) optimal strategy is proposed to maintain the system bus voltage stability. Considering the uncertainties of SVC model parameters and unobservable state variables, the SM algorithm is used to design the robust state observer and SVC adaptive voltage controller. The mathematical state model of isolated wind-diesel hybrid power system together with SVC is established, and then, the SM robust observer is constructed to estimate the SVC state variables. In order to improve the system bus voltage stability, an additional robust adaptive voltage controller is designed for SVC by selecting appropriate switching surface and adaptive reaching condition. The proposed control strategy is shown to be effective through opal-RT OP5600 simulator together with TIF28335 DSP for the isolated wind-diesel system under different operation point. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper proposes a modified one cycle control (OCC) for active power filter (APF) to compensate only harmonic components of load currents. The conventional OCC-based APF cannot differentiate between the harmonic and reactive components of load currents, which leads to the increment in device current rating because of compensation of large reactive currents besides harmonics. The reference signals of the OCC control core have been reconstructed and the associated control equations have been developed, following the control philosophy of simplicity. The modified scheme is easy to implement and only three more sensors are required for measuring load currents compared with the conventional OCC. This modified OCC guarantees the excellent performance of harmonic compensation alone and retains the advantages of the conventional OCC, such as no phase locking loop and the constant switching frequency. The feasibility and performance of the proposed OCC has been validated by experimental studies on a 5 kVA APF hardware platform developed in laboratory. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]