Enhanced Power Flow Control for Grid-Connected Droop-Controlled Inverters With Improved Stability

Abstract

Droop control strategy is widely applied in ac microgrid to realize the seamless mode transition and achieve average power sharing among different inverters. However, there is a lack of analysis about the operation performance of droop control strategy in grid-connected mode. In this paper, grid fluctuation and control accuracy of reactive power are illustrated to be the main influence factors for power flow control according to the small-signal model. The feedforward of grid frequency and voltage magnitude is proposed to mitigate the impacts of grid fluctuation on power flow control. Since the feedforward items are achieved through the synchronous reference frame phase-locked loop with the input of filter capacitor voltage, extra sensors for grid voltage are avoided. Moreover, voltage magnitude control is introduced to enhance the control accuracy of reactive power flow. In addition, modified droop control loops are also proposed to improve the system stability. With the implementation of the proposed control scheme, improved power flow control and enhanced system stability are achieved with the feature of seamless mode transition maintained. Finally, the major contribution of this paper is verified by a laboratory prototype.