Power capacity based bus voltage region partition and online droop coefficient tuning for real-time operation of DC microgrids

Multiple-voltage-region control, in which the bus voltage range is divided into several regions, is usually implemented for DC microgrid operation in distributed manner. Voltage/power droop relationships are imposed for active power sharing among slack terminals. Conventionally, threshold voltages for voltage region partition are determined with fixed percentage of variation around the nominal value, which may result in unevenness of droop coefficients in different regions. If system droop coefficient is too high, significant bus voltage step change due to load variation will occur. On the other hand, significant power sharing error among slack terminals will be induced if the droop coefficient is too low. In this paper, a compromised solution with power capacity based bus voltage region partition is proposed to equalize the droop coefficients in different regions. However, the droop coefficients are determined based on the rated power capacity of system units. Bus voltage discontinuity appears when the power capacity reduces in actual implementation. To eliminate the voltage discontinuity, online droop coefficient tuning according to the real-time power capacity is implemented. Algorithms for local power capacity estimation of solar PV and battery energy storage have been proposed. A lab-scale DC microgrid has been developed for verification of the proposed methods.