Distributed Control Strategies for Microgrids: An Overview

Abstract

There is an increasing interest and research effort focused on the analysis, design and implementation of distributed control systems for AC, DC and hybrid AC/DC microgrids. It is claimed that distributed controllers have several advantages over centralised control schemes, e.g., improved reliability, flexibility, controllability, black start operation, robustness to failure in the communication links, etc. In this work, an overview of the state-of-the-art of distributed cooperative control systems for isolated microgrids is presented. Protocols for cooperative control such as linear consensus, heterogeneous consensus and finitetime consensus are discussed and reviewed in this paper. Distributed cooperative algorithms for primary and secondary control systems, including (among others issues) virtual impedance, synthetic inertia, droopfree control, stability analysis, imbalance sharing, total harmonic distortion regulation, are also reviewed and discussed in this survey. Tertiary control systems, e.g., for economic dispatch of electric energy, based on cooperative control approaches, are also addressed in this work. This review also highlights existing issues, research challenges and future trends in distributed cooperative control of microgrids and their future applications.

A brief review on microgrids: Operation, applications, modeling, and control

“…It is used to regulate the voltage and frequency on the basis of its response to the load and supply changes Zhao et al 163,164 Tertiary The tertiary control level controls the flow of power from the microgrid to the main grid Moayedi and Davoudi 165,166 The microgrid central controller is highly contributive in microgrid control. 201 The central controller has many features for proper coordination of distributed energy resources as per their power generation capacity to serve the critical and noncritical loads. 202 A microgrid can be operated in a centralized or decentralized manner.…”

Consumer Flexibility Aggregation Using Partition Function Games With Non-Transferable Utility

“…Computing large scale cooperation problems in a centralized often leads to a high computational burden; hence distributed approaches are emerging as promising solutions to distribute the computational effort among the involved players [19]. [20] presents an overview of distributed control strategies for microgrids. Some relevant examples deal with the energy management of multi-energy systems, such as the event-triggered coordination approach presented in [21] and the distributed double-Newton descent algorithm proposed in [22].…”

Fuzzy-Based Distributed Cooperative Secondary Control with Stability Analysis for Microgrids

“…The traditional droop control technique considered as the most commonly used control at the primary control level because of its decentralized nature, which lessens the communication requirements [2]. However, the primary droop control shows some other shortcomings, including its frequency/voltage deviations according to load characteristics, inaccurate reactive power-sharing, and poor performance with nonlinear loads [3,4]. The secondary control level is thus introduced as a complement of primary control [2,5].…”

“…The secondary control level is thus introduced as a complement of primary control [2,5]. Limitations of centralized (single-point of failure) and decentralized (poor dynamic and steady-state response) control strategies have led to distributed control structures [3,6]. Recently, multiagent structures or consensus algorithms [7,8] have received increased attention for their simple control structure utilizing sparse communication systems, improved reliability and acceptable dynamic/steady-state performance [6,[8][9][10].…”

“…According to the literature review, it can be realized that DSC is more effective than the centralized one [3]. Due to the limited research undertaken so far, as mentioned in the literature review, a proper DSC is still needed that considers all the drawbacks in a single control strategy.…”