Dual-loop control strategy applied to PV/battery-based islanded DC microgrids for swarm electrification of developing regions

Abstract

In this work, a dual-loop control strategy is applied to a highly distributed architecture of photovoltaic (PV)/battery-based DC microgrid, suitable for swarm electrification of developing regions. Typically, in such schemes, resource sharing among the spatially dispersed PV generation and battery storage resources is enabled via communication-based control methodologies, which adds cost and complexity to the overall system. Alternately, a communication-less and decentralised control methodology is proposed which utilises inner loop current control and outer loop voltage droop (V–I droop) control for the coordinated resource sharing among the distributed resources. Various scenarios of power sharing among the contributing households are evaluated and the efficacy of the proposed control scheme is validated through simulations on MATLAB/Simulink. Results show that the proposed decentralised control strategy is capable of ensuring stable and coordinated operation without any dedicated layer of communication among the dispersed generation/storage resources.

Keywords

• distributed power generation
• electric current control
• decentralised control
• photovoltaic power systems
• power generation control
• closed loop systems
• utilises inner loop current control
• outer loop voltage droop
• coordinated resource sharing
• distributed resources
• control scheme
• decentralised control strategy
• dispersed generation/storage resources
• dual-loop control strategy
• pv/battery-based
• dc microgrids
• swarm electrification
• developing regions
• highly distributed architecture
• photovoltaic/battery-based dc microgrid
• battery storage resources
• communication-based control methodologies
• decentralised control methodology