Improved Reactive Power Sharing for Parallel-operated Inverters in Islanded Microgrids

Walid Issa; Suleiman Sharkh; Tapas Mallick; Mohammad Abusara

Improved Reactive Power Sharing for Parallel-operated Inverters in Islanded Microgrids

Vol. 16, No. 3, pp. 1152-1162, May 2016

10.6113/JPE.2016.16.3.1152

Reactive power sharing

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Abstract

The unequal impedances of the interconnecting cables between paralleled inverters in the island mode of microgrids cause inaccurate reactive power sharing when the traditional droop control is used. Many studies in the literature adopt low speed communications between the inverters and the central control unit to overcome this problem. However, the losses of this communication link can be very detrimental to the performance of the controller. This paper proposes an improved reactive power-sharing control method. It employs infrequent measurements of the voltage at the point of common coupling (PCC) to estimate the output impedance between the inverters and the PCC and then readjust the voltage droop controller gains accordingly. The controller then reverts to being a traditional droop controller using the newly calculated gains. This increases the immunity of the controller against any losses in the communication links between the central control unit and the inverters. The capability of the proposed control method has been demonstrated by simulation and experimental results using a laboratory scale microgrid.

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Cite this article

[IEEE Style]

W. Issa, S. Sharkh, T. Mallick, M. Abusara, "Improved Reactive Power Sharing for Parallel-operated Inverters in Islanded Microgrids," Journal of Power Electronics, vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 1152-1162, 2016. DOI: 10.6113/JPE.2016.16.3.1152.

[ACM Style]

Walid Issa, Suleiman Sharkh, Tapas Mallick, and Mohammad Abusara. 2016. Improved Reactive Power Sharing for Parallel-operated Inverters in Islanded Microgrids. Journal of Power Electronics, 16, 3, (2016), 1152-1162. DOI: 10.6113/JPE.2016.16.3.1152.