Current-sharing Control Research Articles

A Dynamic Consensus Algorithm to Adjust Virtual Impedance Loops for Discharge Rate Balancing of AC Microgrid Energy Storage Units

A dynamic consensus algorithm (DCA)-based coordinated secondary control with an autonomous currentsharing control strategy is proposed in this paper for balancing the discharge rate of energy storage systems (ESSs) in an islanded ac microgrid. The DCA is applied for information sharing between distributed generation (DG) units to regulate the output power of DGs according to the ESS capacities and state-of-charge (SoC). Power regulation is achieved by adjusting the virtual resistances of voltage-controlled inverters with an autonomous current-sharing controller. Compared with existing methods, the proposed approach can provide higher system reliability, expandability, and flexibility due to its distributed control architecture. The proposed controller can effectively prevent operation failure caused by over-current and unintentional outage of DGs by means of balanced discharge rate control. It can also provide fast response and accurate current sharing performance. A generalizable linearized state-space model for n-DG network in the z-domain is also derived and proposed in this paper; the model includes electrical, controller, and communication parts. The system stability and parameter sensitivity have been analyzed based on this model. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed control approach, this paper presents simulation results from a ten-node network and a comparison between experimental results obtained from the conventional power sharing control and the DCA-based SoC coordinated control in a setup with three 2.2 kW DG units.

A Decentralized Current-Sharing Controller Endows Fast Transient Response to Parallel DC–DC Converters

This paper proposes a decentralized current-sharing control strategy to endow fast transient response to paralleled dc–dc converters systems, such as dc microgrids or distributed power systems. The proposed controller consist of two main control loops: an external voltage droop control for current-sharing proposes and an internal current loop. The external droop control loop is designed as a voltage loop with embedded virtual impedance, which avoids the use of a slow voltage loop and a separate extra virtual impedance loop that may limit the system bandwidth. The internal current loop, thanks to the external control loop simplification, plays a major role in the system bandwidth, so that an adaptive proportional-integral (PI) controller is proposed for this matter. In the paper, two different droop control methods have been modeling, designed, simulated, and tested: The conventional virtual-impedance-loop based V–I droop and the proposed embedded-virtual-impedance based I–V droop. In order to compare the dynamic response performances between two droop controllers, their state-space models have been developed and analyzed in this paper. The results show that the dynamic response of the I–V droop control is faster than that of the conventional V–I droop control. Furthermore, by analyzing the effects from I–V droop control parameters, the errors can be reduced faster by enlarging the proportional terms, but with no fluctuations, and then completely eliminated by restoring back to small proportional values. Meanwhile, there exists a tradeoff phenomenon between the fast dynamic response and good steady-state performance; thus, an adaptive PI controller is proposed to both improve dynamic response and guarantee good steady-state performance simultaneously. Experimental results are shown to verify the accuracy of the models and the effectiveness of the proposed control framework.

A 6 A, 93% Peak Efficiency, 4-Phase Digitally Synchronized Hysteretic Buck Converter With ±1.5% Frequency and ±3.6% Current-Sharing Error

A four-phase, quasi-current-mode hysteretic buck converter with digital frequency synchronization, online comparator offset-calibration and, digital current-sharing control is presented. The switching frequency of the hysteretic converter is digitally synchronized to the input clock reference with less than ±1.5% error in the switching frequency range of 3–9.5 MHz. The online offset calibration cancels the input-referred offset of the hysteretic comparator and enables ±1.1% voltage regulation accuracy. Maximum current-sharing error of ±3.6% is achieved by a duty-cycle-calibrated delay line-based pulsewidth modulation generator, without affecting the phase synchronization timing sequence. In light-load conditions, individual converter phases can be disabled, and the final stage power converter output stage is segmented for high efficiency. The dc–dc converter achieves 93% peak efficiency for $V_{i}= 2$ V and $V_{o}= 1.6$ V.

A New Parallel-Connected Diode-Clamped Modular Multilevel Converter With Voltage Self-Balancing

The modular multilevel converter (MMC or M2C) is an emerging attractive multilevel topology for medium-voltage high-power applications. The capacitor voltage balancing control and the improvement of output current rating are two challenging issues of MMC. This paper proposed a new parallel-connected diode-clamped M2C (DCM2C), in which each arm consists of two parallel-connected clusters. In this topology, the capacitor voltages can be balanced automatically without any balancing control algorithms. Theoretically, no voltage sensors are needed to measure the capacitor voltages theoretically. Thus, the control of the converter can be simplified greatly. With a simple current-sharing control, an equal current distribution can be achieved between the two clusters. Furthermore, an extended parallel-DCM2C is proposed for larger current applications, and the corresponding current-sharing control method is developed. Experimental results validated the voltage self-balancing capability of parallel-DCM2C and the effectiveness of the proposed current-sharing control.

Generalized Potential Function-Based Cooperative Current-Sharing Control for High-Power Parallel Charging Systems

In this paper, a new decentralized gradient-based cooperative control method is proposed to achieve current sharing for parallel chargers in energy storage-type light rail vehicle systems. By employing a generalized artificial potential function to characterize the interaction rule for subchargers, the current-sharing control problem is converted into an optimization problem. Based on the gradient of the potential function, a decentralized gradient cooperative control law is derived. A general saturation function is introduced in the proposed control to guarantee the boundedness of the control output. The stability of the closed-loop system under the proposed decentralized gradient control is proven with the aid of a Lyapunov function. Simulation results are provided to verify the feasibility and validity of the proposed distributed current-sharing control method.

Smart Control Strategy for Conversion Efficiency Enhancement of Parallel Inverters at Light Loads

The limited capacity of a single inverter has encouraged the usage of parallel inverters for the interconnection of renewable energy generation system. The current-sharing control is one of the commonly used operating strategies for parallel inverters; however, the conversion efficiency using conventional current sharing is low at light loads. Therefore, a smart control strategy for conversion efficiency enhancement of parallel inverters is proposed in this paper. The proposed control strategy is based on the conversion efficiency curve of a single inverter, where a particle swarm optimization based algorithm is utilized to find the optimal conversion efficiency of parallel inverters. Integration of the proposed control strategy into a photovoltaic generation system (PVGS) with a rated output power of 20 kW interconnected by ten inverters with rated output powers of 2 kW is simulated in this paper. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed smart control strategy can effectively enhance the conversion efficiency of parallel inverters at light loads and increase the electrical energy output of PVGSs. A fully digitally controlled single-phase inverter with a rated output voltage of 220 V and a rated output power of 2 kW is also implemented in this paper. Two implemented inverters are used to validate the performance of the proposed smart control strategy for parallel inverters. Experimental results show that the proposed control strategy can enhance the conversion efficiency of parallel inverters at light loads.

Coordinated Secondary Control for Balanced Discharge Rate of Energy Storage System in Islanded AC Microgrids

A coordinated secondary control approach based on an autonomous current-sharing control strategy for balancing the discharge rates of energy storage systems (ESSs) in islanded ac microgrids is proposed in this paper. The coordinated secondary controller can regulate the power outputs of distributed generation (DG) units according to their states-of-charge and ESS capacities by adjusting the virtual resistances of the paralleled voltage-controlled inverters. Compared with existing controllers, the proposed control strategy not only effectively prevents operation failure caused by overcurrent incidents and unintentional outages in DG units, but also aims to provide a fast transient response and an accurate output-current-sharing performance. A complete root locus analysis is given in order to achieve the system stability and parameter sensitivity. Experimental results are presented to show the performance of the whole system and to verify the effectiveness of the proposed controller.

Instantaneous current‐sharing control scheme of multi‐inverter modules in parallel based on virtual circulating impedance

Parallel multi-inverter modules are characterised by expandable output power and improved reliability. A current-sharing control scheme has to be employed to achieve equally load current sharing of paralleled inverters. At present, circulating active/reactive power are applied to control the voltage in some current-sharing control schemes; however, the size and weight are increased owing to the extra inductor. In this study, the concept of virtual circulating impedance is proposed and introduced into current-sharing control scheme to achieve ideal performance without increasing size and weight in multi-inverter modules in parallel. The mathematical model of circulating impedance is established and the relationship between the phase and the amplitude of circulating current, the phase of inverter module's output reference voltage is decoupled. Simulation and experimental inverter modules are built and operated in parallel system. The results of simulation and experiment verify that the current-sharing control scheme based on circulating impedance is available and efficient.

Current Sharing Control Strategy for IGBTs Connected in Parallel

This work focuses on current sharing between punch-through insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs) connected in parallel and evaluates the mechanisms that allow overall current balancing. Two different control strategies are presented. These strategies are based on the modification of transistor gate-emitter control voltage V_GE by using an active gate driver circuit. The first strategy relies on the calculation of the average value of the current flowing through all parallel-connected IGBTs. The second strategy is proposed by the authors on the basis of a current cross reference control scheme. Finally, the simulation and experimental results of the application of the two current sharing control algorithms are presented.

Research on automatic current sharing control methods for control power supply

High-power switching devices in control power supply have different saturated forward voltage drops and the inconsistency of turning on/off times and they lead to the inconsistency in the external characteristics of the inverter modules in parallel operation. Modules with good performance in external characteristics undertake more currents and lead to overloading status and modules with bad performance in external characteristics stay in light-loading status, which increases the thermal stress of module undertaking more currents and influences the service life of high-power switching devices. Based on the simulation analysis of the small-signal module using control power supply automatic current sharing method, it is able to find out the characteristics of current-sharing loop control, namely, slow response speed of the current-sharing loop, which is beneficial for improving the stability of the entire control power supply system.

A New Way of Controlling Parallel-Connected Inverters by Using Synchronous-Reference-Frame Virtual Impedance Loop—Part I: Control Principle

A novel simple and effective autonomous current-sharing controller for parallel three-phase inverters is proposed in this paper. The proposed controller provides faster response and better accuracy in contrast to the conventional droop control, since this novel approach does not require any active or reactive power calculations. Instead, a synchronous-reference-frame (SRF) virtual impedance loop and an SRF-based phase-locked loop are used. Stationary analysis is provided in order to identify the inherent mechanism of the direct and quadrature output currents in relation to the voltage amplitude and frequency with different line impedances by means of the system transfer functions. Comparison experiments from two parallel inverters are presented to compare the control performance of the conventional droop control and the proposed control with different line impedances. In addition, experimental results from a setup with three parallel 2.2-kW inverters verify the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy in different scenarios.

Modeling and Design of an Oscillatory Current-Sharing Control Strategy in DC Microgrids

This paper presents an effective control scheme in dc microgrids to precisely share the load current oscillatory and dc components among distributed generation (DG) units. The proposed control strategy includes current and voltage control blocks. The current control block consists of oscillatory and dc current-sharing units. The main idea of the proposed method is to share the load current oscillatory and dc components among the DG units based on their rated power, by assigning appropriate output impedance values and droop coefficients to each DG unit. The voltage control block is a multiloop voltage control unit employed to control the microgrid voltage. The detailed model of the proposed control architecture is established, and the system dynamics is analyzed. Since the synthesis of a local controller uses only information of the corresponding DG unit, the design procedure is totally decentralized. The performance and dynamic response of the proposed control scheme are verified through extensive simulation studies and experimental results.

Interleaved Buck Converter With Continuous Input Current, Extremely Low Output Current Ripple, Low Switching Losses, and Improved Step-Down Conversion Ratio

This paper proposes an interleaved buck converter (IBC) with continuous input current, extremely low output current ripple, low switching losses, and improved step-down conversion ratio. Unlike the conventional IBC, the proposed converter has a continuous input current, and its output current ripple is extremely low. The proposed converter has a lower voltage stress in comparison to the conventional IBC and can also provide a high step-down ratio, which makes it a proper choice for high-power applications where a nonisolated step-down converter with low output current ripple and continuous input current is required. Also, the proposed converter can provide current sharing between two interleaved modules without using additional current-sharing control method. All of these benefits are obtained without any additional stress on the circuit components. A prototype converter with 200-V input and 24-V–10-A output is implemented to verify the theoretical analysis. Operational principles and experimental results are presented in this paper.

Automatic Current Sharing of an Input-Parallel Output-Parallel (IPOP)-Connected DC–DC Converter System With Chain-Connected Rectifiers

Input-parallel output-parallel (IPOP)-connected converter systems allow the use of low-power converter modules for high-power applications. An IPOP converter topology with half-wave, daisy chain-connected rectifiers is presented which consists of multiple half-bridge (HB) dc–dc converter modules. By utilizing a common-duty-ratio control scheme, without a dedicated current-sharing controller, automatic sharing of input current and load current in the IPOP converter is achieved even in the presence of differences of more than 10% in various module parameters. The steady-state and dynamic-state current-sharing performance of the proposed IPOP converter is analyzed by using a steady-state dc model and a small-signal model of the system, respectively. It is concluded that steady-state current sharing among modules can be realized by applying a common-duty-ratio control scheme and by reducing the difference in transformer turn ratios, while dynamic-state current sharing is only slightly affected by substantial module parameter mismatches. The stability and current-sharing performance are verified by Saber simulation and an 800-W prototype consisting of two HB modules. The IPOP converter topology under the common-duty-ratio scheme can be extended to any system of three or more converter modules, including full-bridge dc–dc converters.

Current sharing in parallel fuel cell generation system based on model predictive control

Parallel connection is usually adapted in fuel cell system for the high power applications. Fuel cell subsystem has different dynamic characteristics. The connection will show imbalance in load sharing and current distribution. Thus a robust parallel operation and current sharing algorithm is required. In this paper the block diagram of parallel fuel cell generation system is presented, and a master-slave model predictive control (MPC) method is proposed for the current-sharing control of the systems. Neural network optimization is used to reduce the computational time of single step optimization in model predictive control. The proposed MPC-based current sharing strategy is verified to be feasible and effective.

The Development of High-Current Power Supply System for Electrolytic Copper Foil

A 6.5 V/50 kA high-frequency switching power supply (HSPS) system composed of 10 power modules is developed to meet the requirements of copper-foil electrolysis. The power module is composed of a two-leg pulse width modulation (PWM) rectifier and a DC/DC converter. The DC/DC converter adopts two full-wave rectifiers in parallel to enhance the output. For the two-leg PWM rectifier, the ripple of the DC-link voltage is derived. A composite control method with a ripple filter is then proposed to effectively improve the performance of the rectifier. To meet the process demand of copper-foil electrolysis, the virtual impedance-based current-sharing control method with load current full feedforward is proposed for n-parallel DC/DC converters. The roles of load current feedforward and virtual impedance are analyzed, and the current-sharing control model of the HSPS system is derived. Virtual impedance is used to adjust the current-sharing impedance without changing the equivalent output impedance, which can effectively reduce current-sharing errors. Finally, simulation and experimental results verify the structure and control method.

Modular Current Sharing Control Scheme for Parallel-Connected Converters

A modular current sharing control scheme is proposed in this paper to attain good current distribution between equally rated parallel-connected converters. In this scheme, local information is used by each inverter to achieve the required current control with minimal information sharing between the converters. Unlike conventional current sharing control methods that use a stationary or rotating reference frame representation, the converter currents in the proposed controller are represented by the magnitude of the current space vector. As a result, each converter employs only one proportional-integral compensator to share the load current. The operation of the new current sharing control scheme is demonstrated using two different pulsewidth modulation (PWM) control strategies: conventional space-vector PWM and discontinuous PWM. A mathematical analysis of the proposed control scheme is presented, and the performance of the controller is experimentally verified using a 2.5-kVA test rig. The results show excellent current sharing characteristics with minimal communications between the parallel-connected converters.

General Analysis and Design Guideline for a Battery Buffer System With DC/DC Converter and EDLC for Electric Vehicles and its Influence on Efficiency

In this paper, the general design of a battery buffer system (BBS) consisting of a dc/dc converter and electric double layer capacitors for an electric vehicle is presented. This is intended to save the regenerative braking energy and to support the battery during acceleration. The design of a multiphase converter in interleaved operation with nonideal coupled inductors is stated to minimize volume and power losses while maintaining given current ripple limitations. A reduced sensor current-sharing control method is developed and its correct choice of the sensor position is explained. The peak efficiency of the designed and built converter can be measured to nearly 99%. The corresponding BBS is implemented in a lead-acid battery powered electric lift truck propulsion system. The system operation with and without the BBS is compared to examine the behavior and the overall efficiency. It can be shown that the traction battery stress can be strictly reduced as well as the temperature rise in the battery. Furthermore, the efficiency can be increased in the range of 5-6%. The battery's lifetime improvement is estimated by means of the difference in the temperature rise to approximately 20%.

A Novel Parallel Current-sharing Control Method of Switch Power Supply

A novel parallel current-sharing control method of switch power supply is proposed, on the basis of a detailed analysis of several common parallel current-sharing control methods and recent related patents. Only the current of switch power modules with maximum and minimum output current will be regulated, which is selected by the extreme current selection circuit in this method. Four cases with different extremum situation are discussed, and in each case, principles and equations are given. Finally the current-sharing control of switch power supply parallel system is realized. Experimental results show that the current-sharing method is reasonable and effective.

Research of Current-Sharing Control Strategy of Parallel PEMFC DC Power Supply System

For the problems of different parameters PEMFC (Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell) applied to dc micro-grid at the same time, the basic framework of two parallel PEMFC dc power supply system was put forward in this paper, meanwhile, the characteristics of this system was analyzed. For the problem of branch current distribution of parallel system, this paper set up the small signal mathematical model of BUCK connected in parallel, designed the control circuit of current-sharing of this system. Finally ,the simulation experiments verified the accuracy and rapidity of current sharing and the reliability and stability of this system, when the sub-circuit was fault.