• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.1020-1033
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• 2019

This paper presents a control strategy to enhance the accuracy of reactive power sharing between paralleled three-phase inverters in an islanded microgrid. In this study, the mismatch of power sharing when the line impedances have significant differences between inverters connected to a microgrid has been solved, the accuracy of the reactive power sharing in an islanded microgrid is increased, the voltage droop slope is tuned to compensate for the mismatch of voltage drops across the line impedances by using an enhanced droop controller. The proposed method ensures accurate power sharing even if the microgrid has local loads at the output of the inverters. The control model has been simulated by MATLAB/Simulink with two or three inverters connected in parallel. Simulation results demonstrate the accuracy of the implemented control method. Furthermore, in order to validate the theoretical analysis and simulation results, an experimental setup was built in the laboratory. Results obtained from the experimental setup verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.387-396
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• 2013

This paper investigates the droop control of parallel inverters for an islanded mode of microgrid. Frequency and voltage droop control is one of power control and load demand sharing methods. However, although the active power is properly shared, the reactive power sharing is inaccurate with conventional method due to the unequal line impedances and the power coupling of active - reactive power. In order to solve this problem, an improved droop method with virtual inductor concept and a voltage and current controller properly designed have been considered and analyzed through the PSiM simulation. The performance of improved droop method is analyzed in not only low-voltage line but also medium voltage line.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.1152-1162
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• 2016

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.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.81-90
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• 2015

This paper investigates the droop control-based real and reactive power load sharing with a virtual inductor when the line impedance between inverter and Point of Common Coupling (PCC) is partly and unequally resistive in high-capacity systems. In this paper, the virtual inductor method is applied to parallel inverter systems with resistive and inductive line impedance. Reactive power sharing error has been improved by applying droop control after considering each line impedance voltage drop. However, in high capacity parallel systems with large output current, the reference output voltage, which is the output of droop controller, becomes lower than the rated value because of the high voltage drop from virtual inductance. Hence, line impedance voltage drop has been added to the droop equation so that parallel inverters operate within the range of rated output voltage. Additionally, the virtual inductor value has been selected via small signal modeling to analyze stability in transient conditions. Finally, the proposed droop method has been verified by MATLAB and PSIM simulation.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.254-264
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• 2019

This paper proposes an indirect current control technique based on a proportional resonant (PR) approach for the seamless mode transfer of utility interactive inverters. Direct-current and voltage hybrid control methods have been used for inverter control under grid-connected and islanded modes. A large bandwidth can be selected due to the structure of single-loop control. However, this results in poor dynamic transients due to sudden changes of the controller during mode changes. Therefore, inverter control based on indirect current is proposed to improve the dynamic transients by consistently controlling the output voltage under all of the operation modes. A PR-based indirect current control topology is used in this study to maintain the load voltage quality under all of the modes. The design processes of the PR-based triple loop are analyzed in detail while considering the system stability and dynamic transients. The mode transfer techniques are described in detail for both sudden unintentional islanding and islanded mode voltage quality improvements. In addition, they are described using the proposed indirect control structure. The proposed method is verified by the PSiM simulations and laboratory-scale VDER-HILS experiments.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Illuminating and Electrical Installation Engineers
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.46-53
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• 2013

This paper introduces a grid-interactive storage system to operate the customers without voltage source inverters as a microgrid. The proposed storage system does not require any modification of the control scheme of the inverters existing within the customers. Novel control scheme of the grid-interfacing storage system according to its new structure ensures the seamless transition between the grid-connected and islanded operation of the microgrid.

• Advances in Energy Research
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.81-95
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• 2015

Microgrid, which can be considered as an integration of various dispersed resources (DRs), is characterized by number of DRs interfaced through the power electronics converters. The microgrid comprising these DRs is often operated in an islanded mode. To minimize the cost, reduce complexity and increase reliability, it is preferred to avoid any communication channel between them. Consequently, the droop control method is traditionally adopted to distribute active and reactive power among the DRs operating in parallel. However, the accuracy of distribution of active and reactive power among the DRs controlled by the conventional droop control approach is highly dependent on the value of line impedance, R/X i.e., resistance to reactance ratio of the line, voltage setting of inverters etc. The limitations of the conventional droop control approach are demonstrated and a modified droop control approach to reduce the effect of impedance mis-match and improve the time response is proposed. The error in reactive power sharing is minimized by inserting virtual impedance in line with the inverters to remove the mis-match in impedance. The improved time response is achieved by modifying the real-power frequency droop using arctan function. Simulations results are presented to validate the effectiveness of the control approach.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.234-250
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• 2018

This paper presents a new load sharing control for use between paralleled three-phase inverters in an islanded microgrid based on the online line impedance estimation by the use of a Kalman filter. In this study, the mismatch of power sharing when the line impedance changes due to temperature, frequency, significant differences in line parameters and the requirements of the Plug-and-Play mode for inverters connected to a microgrid has been solved. In addition, this paper also presents a new droop control method working with the line impedance that is different from the traditional droop algorithm when the line impedance is assumed to be pure resistance or pure inductance. In this paper, the line impedance estimation for parallel inverters uses the minimum square method combined with a Kalman filter. In addition, the secondary control loops are designed to restore the voltage amplitude and frequency of a microgrid by using a combined nominal value SOGI-PLL with a generalized integral block and phase lock loop to monitor the exact voltage magnitude and frequency phase at the PCC. A control model has been simulated in Matlab/Simulink with three voltage source inverters connected in parallel for different ratios of power sharing. The simulation results demonstrate the accuracy of the proposed control method.

• Proceedings of the KIPE Conference
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• 2016.07a
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• pp.125-126
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• 2016

여러 분산 발전 시스템으로 구성된 마이크로그리드는 계통연계 모드에서 부하의 수요에 담당하게 되고, 계통 사고가 발생할 시 독립 운전 모드로 동작을 해야 한다. 본 논문에서는 독립운전 모드 동작 시 제어 방식 중에서 유, 무효 전력제어를 통한 적절한 전력 분담을 실현하기 위한 드룹제어 방식을 다룬다. 이 방식은 선로 임피던스가 복합 성분으로 구성되어 있거나 불 평형 일 경우 여러 문제로 유,무효 전력 분담의 오차를 발생 시킨다. 이에 대하여 가상임피던스를 추가함으로써, 복합적 불 평형 임피던스에 기인한 유,무효 전력 분담의 오차를 해결 하여, 시스템의 유,무효 전력 분담을 개선 하고자 하였다. 가상 임피던스에 따른 출력 임피던스에 대해서 연구하고 이에 따른 드룹제어를 분석하고, PSIM 시뮬레이션을 이용하여 검증하였다.

• Proceedings of the KIPE Conference
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• 2014.11a
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• pp.145-146
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• 2014

여러 가지 분산 발전 시스템들은 마이크로그리드의 형태를 지니고 있다. 이 마이크로그리드는 계통연계모드에서 부하의 수요를 담당하게 되고, 계통 사고가 발생할 시 단독운전모드로 동작을 해야 한다. 드룹 제어 방식은 이 때 각각의 분산발전시스템에서의 유효전력과 무효전력 부하 sharing을 통해 안정적으로 전력을 공급 할 수 있고 순환 전류를 최소화 할 수 있다. 본 논문에서는 제안된 가상 저항과 캐패시터를 이용하여 인버터 병렬 운전 시스템을 위한 드룹 제어에 대해서 연구하였다. 그리고 가상 복합 임피던스에 따른 출력 임피던스에 대해서 연구하고 이에 따른 드룹 제어를 분석하여 PSIM 시뮬레이션으로 이를 검증하였다.