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Triple droop control method for ac microgrids

Article  in  IET Power Electronics · October 2017

DOI: 10.1049/iet-pel.2017.0005

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IET Power Electronics

Research Article

Triple droop control method for ac microgrids ISSN 1755-4535

Received on 3rd January 2017
Revised 20th May 2017
Accepted on 27th June 2017
E-First on 17th July 2017
doi: 10.1049/iet-pel.2017.0005
www.ietdl.org

Yanghong Xia1, Yonggang Peng1 , Wei Wei1

1Department of Electrical Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, People's Republic of China
E-mail: pengyg@zju.edu.cn

Abstract: In this study, a novel droop control method for ac microgrids is proposed to enhance the performance of power
regulation, which is composed of three parts. The angle droop and the frequency droop are adopted to control the active power
in coordination, while the modified voltage droop is used to control the reactive power. There are several improvements in this
proposed triple droop control method compared with the conventional droop control. First, the dynamics of active power
regulation are enhanced because of the angle droop. Second, the stability of the system is upgraded and the droop coefficients
can vary in greater range. Third, the accuracy of reactive power regulation is improved, especially in the grid-connected mode,
the DGs can output the specified reactive power with the modified voltage droop, which benefits the economic dispatch of the
microgrid. Through these three combined droop control strategies, the performance of the whole system can be improved a lot
whether in the grid-connected mode or the islanded mode. Furthermore, the stability of the proposed triple droop control is
analysed, which shows that the stability of the system is upgraded. The effectiveness of the proposed control method is verified
by the hardware-in-loop tests.

1 Introduction at the resistive line impedance, a method applying global voltage as

Microgrids are getting more and more attention because of the
pressure from environment and resource. To manage the DGs in
the microgrid, many control methods have been researched in
published literatures. The master–slave control methods based on
the fast communication system have been proposed in [1, 2]. It
needs a centralised information device to collect information of the
entire slave DGs, thus the system reliability is degraded due to the
single point of failure.
To improve the reliability, the droop control method is widely
studied. For the conventional droop control under the condition
that the line impedance is mainly inductive, the frequency droop
and voltage droop strategies are used to control the active and
reactive power, respectively [3–5]. However, there are some
limitations when the conventional droop is adopted. On the one
hand, since the voltage droop controller is just a proportional
controller, the DGs cannot output the specified reactive power in
the grid-connected mode. Moreover, the great difference of line
impedances among different DGs will result in inaccuracy of
reactive power sharing in the islanded mode [6, 7]. On the other
hand, the active power is only controlled by the frequency which is
integrated with time into angle. Therefore, the dynamics of the
active power are very slow and the stability margin is small. At the
same time, there are large deviations of frequency. To overcome
those disadvantages mentioned above, many modified versions of
droop control have been investigated in some existing literatures.
Sun et al. [8] reveal the similarities and differences of virtual
impedance, angle droop and frequency droop. Based on these new
perspectives, a unified control law is proposed and the physical
meaning of corresponding controller parameters is obvious, which
benefits the designing and tuning of the controller. From another
point of view, Guerrero et al. [9] think that the droop control
method is a proportional controller and propose that using a PID
controller but not only a proportional controller could enhance the
dynamics of the system. Similarly, a H∞ control method is
proposed in [10] to regulate the frequency in the islanded mode,
which can increase the robustness of the system. In the low-voltage
microgrids, the line impedance is usually not inductive but high
ratio of R/ X, hence the active and reactive power sharing will be
not accurate according to the conventional droop control. Aiming
a feedback signal is proposed in [11] to keep the accurate active
power sharing. Li et al. [12] propose that virtual impedance can be
adopted to improve the performance of droop control and analyse
the power flow for low-voltage AC and DC microgrids considering
droop control and virtual impedance. From another perspective, a
droop method with coupling of active and reactive power is
introduced in [13], which can realise accurate power sharing. To
keep the frequency nominal in the islanded mode, angle droop is
proposed in [14–16], which only considers the islanded mode
without consideration of mode switching. Furthermore, for the pure
angle droop, the accuracy of the active power sharing cannot be
ensured.
On the other hand, the secondary control strategies are proposed
to enhance the performance of the conventional droop control.
Through directly collecting the global information, centralised
control methods are presented in [17–19]. Especially in [19], for an
online uninterruptible power system with resistive line impedance,
a reactive power to phase droop strategy is proposed to keep the
system frequency at 50 Hz for different load conditions. At the
same time, a centralised secondary controller is employed to
compensate voltage sags and phase drift due to the droop control.
Then, the voltages of load side are always synchronised with the
utility voltages, which results in a much simpler bypass connection
process. Because of the low reliability of the centralised control
methods, distributed control methods based on the communication
with the neighbour DGs are proposed in [20–26] to increase the
reliability and scalability of the system. The global information
required to enhance the performance of the microgrid is estimated
based on multi agent systems in the secondary level [20], then a
corresponding adaptive droop strategy is proposed and it can
operate in different modes. Considering the gap between large
time-scale economic dispatch (ED) and small time-scale automatic
voltage control (AGC), Li et al. [21] propose an agented-based
distributed secondary control strategy by integrating AGC and ED
together seamlessly to increase the economical efficiency of a
microgrid. In addition, a hierarchical control strategy that is
compatible with droop control for islanded microgrids is also
reported in [27, 28].
To enhance performance of power regulation, a triple droop
control method is proposed in this paper. The triple droop control is

IET Power Electron., 2017, Vol. 10 Iss. 13, pp. 1705-1713 1705
© The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2017
Fig. 1  Configuration and the proposed control method for ith DGs
(a) Configuration of the inverter, (b) Inner loop control method, (c) Outer loop control method
composed of three parts, that is, the frequency droop, the angle
droop and the modified voltage droop. First, the frequency droop
and angle droop are combined to control the active power, that is,
the phase angle of the output voltage is controlled by a PI
controller instead of an integral controller. Compared to the pure
frequency droop, the combined control method can make the
dynamics of the active power faster and the frequency deviations
of the microgrid can be decreased with appropriate angle and
frequency droop coefficients. At the same time, the stability margin
of the system is also increased. In addition, compared to the pure
angle droop, the combined droop can make the DGs output the
specified active power in the grid-connected mode. Further, in the
islanded mode, the DGs can share the active power accurately.
Second, the modified voltage droop is adopted to control the
reactive power. Being different from the conventional voltage
control, the modified voltage droop is mainly using the output
voltage as feedback signal to control the output reactive power.
With an adaptive droop curve, the DGs can output specified
reactive power in the grid-connected mode, which the conventional
droop control can hardly realise. Furthermore, after appropriate
simplification, the stability of the proposed triple droop control
method is analysed. Through the stability analysis, it can be
conclude that the stability of the system is upgraded and the droop
coefficients can vary in greater range. The effectiveness of the
proposed control method is verified by results obtained through the
real-time hardware-in-loop (HIL) tests based on the RTLAB and
STM32F407 MCUs.
This paper is organised as follows. In Section 2, the proposed
control method is introduced in detail. Section 3 analyses the
stability of the proposed control method. Then in Section 4, the
effectiveness of the proposed control method is verified by results
of the contrast experiment based on the HIL tests. Finally, Section
5 summarises this paper and draws the conclusions.
2 Description of the proposed control method
The whole control method consists of two parts, namely the inner
loop and outer loop. As shown in Fig. 1, the main function of the
inner loop is to realise the accurate voltage tracking, while the
main function of the outer loop is to realise the power sharing and
provide the reference voltage for the inner loop.
2.1 Control strategy of the inner loop
As shown in Fig. 1a, the inverter is connected to the microgrid bus
through a LC filter. L1 is the filter inductance with parasitic
1706
resistance R1, while C is the filter capacitance. Lline and Rline are the
line inductance and resistance between the DG and the microgrid
bus. As shown in many literatures, the line between the DG and the
bus is the high ratio of R/ X . Therefore, the frequency or angle
versus the active power and the voltage versus the reactive power
strategy are not proper anymore, but many solutions have been
proposed to solve this problem such as the virtual impedance or the
method in [13] and so on. This is not the key point of this paper,
hence we think that the line is still inductive by adding extra
inductance or adopting the virtual impedance. Then, the frequency
or angle versus the active power and the voltage versus the reactive
power strategy can be still adopted.
The inner loop is mainly to control the output voltage vo to
follow the reference voltage generated by the outer loop. There are
many different control methods about output voltage control of the
inverter [29, 30]. The conventional dual-loop control method based
on the Park transform is adopted in this paper. Fig. 1b shows the
control block diagram for d-axis, where the coupling parts of q-axis
are omitted. The current loop controls the current i1 with a
proportional controller Gc s = KiP to increase the damping of the
system and to make the system stable, while the voltage loop
controls the output voltage vo with a proportional-integral (PI)
controller Gv s = KvP + KvI /s to realise the accurate tracking.
2.2 Control strategy of the outer loop
The outer loop is mainly composed of the proposed triple droop
control method, which provides the reference voltage for the inner
loop and realises the power sharing. The triple droop control
method is introduced in detail as follows.
As depicted in Fig. 2a, the power from the DG to the bus can be
calculated as
3 V busVsin θ 3 V busVθ
P= ⋅ ≃ ⋅
2 X 2 X
2 2
, (1)
3 V − VV buscos θ 3 V − VV bus
Q= ⋅ ≃ ⋅
2 X 2 X
if the phase angle difference θ is very small. V bus and V are the
magnitude of bus voltage and output voltage of the DG,
respectively, X is the line impedance.
From (1), it can be concluded that the output active power can
be controlled by θ and the output reactive power can be controlled
by V. Further, the phase angle difference θ can be controlled by the
frequency droop and angle droop, while the voltage magnitude V
IET Power Electron., 2017, Vol. 10 Iss. 13, pp. 1705-1713
© The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2017
Fig. 2  Schematic of the triple droop control
(a) Simplified circuit diagram, (b) Moment for connection, (c) Frequency droop, (d) Angle droop, (e) Modified voltage droop
can be controlled by the voltage droop. It should be noted that there
is a synchronisation process because of the introduction of angle
droop, therefore the moment when the DG is connected to the
microgird is not arbitrary. An alternative is that the DG is
connected to the microgrid when the curve of bus voltage restarts
as shown in Fig. 2b.
The control law of the frequency and angle droop can be
expressed as
f i = f ∗ + m f i Pi∗ − Pi ; i f Pimin < Pi < Pimax
CPM : Pimax (or Pimin); i f Pi ≥ Pimax (or ≤ Pimin)
δi = mδi Pi∗ − Pi ; i f Pimin < Pi < Pimax
CPM : Pimax (or Pimin); i f Pi ≥ Pimax (or ≤ Pimin)
where i = 1, 2, … denotes the different DGs, f ∗ denotes the rated
frequency of the system, Pi∗ is the specified active power of the ith
DG injecting to the bus in the grid-connected mode, Pi is the
actual output active power of the ith DG. When the output active
power of the DG reaches the limiting value (the maximum or the
minimum value), the regulation capability of the DG also reaches
its limitation. Therefore, the DG operates into the constant power
mode (CPM) and outputs the maximum or minimum active power.
The droop coefficients m f i, mδi can be chosen as
f max − f min δimax − δimin
0 ≤ mf i ≤ , 0 ≤ mδi ≤ , active power can be accurately shared by DGs, which the pure
Pimax − Pimin Pimax − Pimin
where Pimax and Pimin are the maximum and minimum output active
power of the ith DG, f max and f min are the allowable maximum
and minimum value of the frequency, δimax and δimin are the set
maximum and minimum value of phase angle with consideration of
the capacity of the inverter.
The control law of the modified voltage droop can be expressed
as
Qire f = Qi∗ + ni V ∗ − V i ; i f V i > V iH (or < V iL)
CPM: Qi∗; i f V iL < V i < V iH
CPM : Qimax (or Qimin); i f V i ≥ V max (or ≤ V min)
where i = 1, 2, … denotes the different DGs, V ∗ denotes the rated
output voltage of the DGs, V max and V min are the allowable
maximum and minimum value of the voltage, while V iL and
V iH are the set maximum and minimum output voltage of the
DGs in the grid-connected mode with consideration of the capacity
of the inverter, Qi∗ is the specified reactive power of the ith DG
injecting to the bus in the grid-connected mode, the output of the
droop controller Qiref is the reference output reactive power of the
ith DG. Similarity, when the output reactive power of the DG
reaches the limiting value, the regulation capability of the DG also
reaches its limitation, hence the DG operates into the constant
power mode and outputs the maximum or minimum reactive
power. Finally, the actual output reactive Qi is fed back to track
Qire f accurately by a PI controller GQ s = KQP + KQI /s as shown in
Fig. 1c. The droop coefficients ni can be chosen as
IET Power Electron., 2017, Vol. 10 Iss. 13, pp. 1705-1713
© The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2017
Qimax − Qimin
ni ≥ ,
V max − V min
where Qimax and Qimin are the maximum and minimum output
reactive power of the inverter..
2.3 Characteristics of the proposed control method
The basic principle of the proposed control method has been
introduced in Part 2.1 and 2.2. In this part, the characteristics of the
proposed triple droop control are analysed.
, (2) In the grid-connected mode, the frequency of the system is
clamped at f ∗ by the utility. According to Fig. 1c, Figs. 2c and (2),
the output active power of the ith DG must be Pi∗ . That is, the DGs
can output specified active power in the grid-connected mode. In
the islanded mode, all the DGs will operate at a new frequency f ∗ ′
when the system is in the steady state, or the system will be
unstable. Therefore, the frequency difference of all the DGs is the
same. According to Figs. 1c, 2c and (2), the active power changes
of the ith DG ΔPi can be calculated as
f∗ − f ∗′
ΔPi = Pi − Pi∗ = . (4)
mf i
From (4), it can be conclude that the active power changes of DGs
are inversely proportional to the droop coefficients m f i, hence the
angle droop is hard to realise.
On the other hand, the conventional pure frequency droop is
just like an integral controller, while the combined frequency and
angle droop is like a PI controller as shown in Fig. 1c. Hence, the
dynamics of the system can be enhanced. Compared to the
conventional droop control, for the same response speeds, the
frequency droop coefficients can be smaller in the proposed droop
control, so the frequency deviations of the microgrid can be
decreased under the condition that m f i and mδi are matched each
other.
For the reactive power control, when the microgrid is in the
, (3) grid-connected mode, the magnitude of the output voltage changes
within the interval [V iL, V iH ], the reference output reactive power is
Qi∗ as shown in Figs. 2e and (3). With a PI controller as shown in
Fig. 1c, the DG can output the specified reactive power, which is
hard to be realised by the conventional voltage droop. In the
islanded mode, the magnitude of the output voltage changes
beyond the interval [V iL, V iH ], hence the voltage droop starts to
work. With assumption that Qi can track Qire f accurately and
according to (3), the reactive power changes of the ith DG ΔQi in
the steady state can be calculated as
ΔQi = Qi − Qi∗ = ni V ∗ − V i . (5)
From (5), it can be concluded that the changes of the reactive
power of the DGs are proportional to the droop coefficients ni
omitting the influence of the voltage drop across the line
impedance. If considering this influence, decreasing the droop
coefficients ni can improve the accuracy of the reactive power
sharing.
1707
 As depicted in Section 2.2, the phase angle of the output voltage of
the DG is synchronised with the phase angle of the bus voltage,
hence the following equations can be concluded

ẋ1 = 2π m f P∗ − x2 + ( f ∗ − f g)
θ = x1 + mδ P∗ − x2
, (8)
ẋ3 = KQI n V ∗ − V + Q∗ − x4
ΔV = x3 + KQP n V ∗ − V + Q∗ − x4

where f g is the frequency of the microgrid. Combining (7) and (8),

the state equation of the whole system can be derived as,

Ẋ = AX + U
, (9)
Fig. 3  Control block of the triple droop control method Y = CX

In conclusion, in the gird-connected mode, the proposed triple 2π(m f P∗ + f ∗ − f g)

droop control method can make the DGs output specified active ∗
x1 3 V busV
and reactive power, which benefits the economic dispatch of the ⋅ mδP∗
microgrid. While in the islanded mode, the active power and 2 τX
x2
reactive power can be well shared by the DGs according to the X= , U= KQI ,
x3 Q∗
droop coefficients which are set with consideration of the capacity 1 + nKQP
of DGs. Furthermore, the dynamics of the system are enhanced. x4
3 2V ∗ − V bus KQP ∗ V ∗ V ∗ − V bus
With appropriate parameters, the frequency deviations caused by ⋅ Q +
the frequency droop in the islanded mode can be decreased. 2 τX(1 + nKQP) τX
P x2 0 1 0 0
Y= = ,C = ,
3 Stability analysis Q x4 0 0 0 1
In this section, the stability of the proposed triple droop control is
analysed based on the typical single-machine-infinite-bus system. (see equation below) From the system matrix A of (9), it can be
To simplify the analysis, the inner loop is viewed as ‘1’, that is, concluded that the active power control and reactive power control
vo = vo∗ (also, V = M). The situation when the DGs operate in the is decoupled with assumption that the angle difference θ and the
droop mode is analysed and the situation when the DGs operate in magnitude change V are small. Therefore, A is stable if and only if
the constant power mode is not analysed because it is relatively A1 and A2 are both stable.
easier. Based on the above analysis, the whole outer loop is The eigenequation of A1 is
presented in Fig. 3 in the form that is suitable for the stability ∗
analysis, in which the subscript i is omitted and four state variables 1 3 V busV V busV ∗
s2 + + ⋅ mδ s + 3πm f = 0. (10)
are selected. τ 2 τX τX
As shown in Fig. 3, the power feedback signals (P and Q) are
filtered by two first-order filters with time constant τ. With According to the Routh criterion, A1 is stable. From (10), it can be
assumption that V = M = V ∗ + ΔV, the P and Q can be expressed concluded that mδ increases the system damping, therefore the
as stability of the system is improved. The changes of dominant poles
of active power control along with coefficients m f and mδ are
1 1 3 V busVsin θ depicted in Figs. 4a and b, respectively, based on (10), where the
P= ⋅ Pm = ⋅ ⋅
τs + 1 τs + 1 2 X other parameters are shown in Table 1.
2
. (6) If the conventional frequency droop strategy is adopted to
1 1 3 V − VV buscos θ
Q= ⋅ Qm = ⋅ ⋅ control the active power, we can obtain the eigenequation of active
τs + 1 τs + 1 2 X
power control by setting mδ as zero, that is,
Choosing P, Q as state variables x2, x4 and considering that the ∗
angle difference θ and the magnitude change ΔV are usually very 1 V busV
s2 + s + 3πm f = 0. (11)
small, then (6) can be simplified as τ τX

3 V busV
∗ Comparing (10) and (11), it is obvious that the damping of
τẋ2 = − x2 + ⋅ θ conventional frequency droop strategy is less than that of the
2 X
. (7) proposed angle plus frequency droop strategy, that is, lacking the
∗ ∗ ∗
3 2V − V bus 3 V (V − V bus) term (3/2) ⋅ (V busV ∗ /τX)mδ, which also meets the analysis of [8].
τẋ4 = − x4 + ⋅ ⋅V + ⋅
2 X 2 X The changes of dominant poles of conventional droop control
along with droop coefficient m f are depicted in Fig. 4e based on
(11), in which the other parameters are shown in Table 1.

0 −2πm f 0 0
∗ ∗
3 V busV 1 3 V busV
⋅ − + ⋅ mδ 0 0
2 τX τ 2 τX
A1 0
A= = nKQI KQI .
0 A2 0 0 − −
1 + nKQP 1 + nKQP
3 2V ∗ − V bus ∗
1 3 2V − V bus KQP
0 0 ⋅ − + ⋅
2 τX(1 + nKQP) τ 2 τX(1 + nKQP)
1708 IET Power Electron., 2017, Vol. 10 Iss. 13, pp. 1705-1713
© The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2017
Fig. 4  Root locus of the system
(a) Dominant Poles of active power when m f changes from 10−7 to 10−4 Hz/W, (b) Dominant Poles of active power when mδ changes from 10−7 to 10−4 rad/W, (c) Dominant
Poles of reactive power when n changes from 1 to 8000 Var/V, (d) Dominant Poles of reactive power when KQP changes from 10−4 to 10−2 V/Var, (e) Dominant Poles of
conventional droop control when m f changes from 10−7 to 10−4 Hz/W

∗
Compared to Fig. 4a, the dominant poles in Fig. 4e is closer to the 1 3 2V − V bus KQP nKQI
imaginary axis, which means that the stable margin of the system is s2 + + ⋅ + s
τ 2 τX 1 + nKQP 1 + nKQP
decreased. ∗
(12)
The eigenequation of A2 is nKQI 3 2V − V bus KQI
+ + ⋅ = 0.
τ(1 + nKQP) 2 τX(1 + nKQP)

Generally speaking, V ∗ ≥ V bus, hence according to the Routh

criterion, A2 is stable. Furthermore, because A1 and A2 are both
stable, the whole system is stable. The changes of dominant poles

IET Power Electron., 2017, Vol. 10 Iss. 13, pp. 1705-1713 1709
© The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2017
of reactive power control along with coefficients n and KQP are output specified active power accurately in the grid-connected
depicted in Figs. 4c and d, respectively, based on (12), in which mode, that is, DG1 ≈ 20 kW and DG2 ≈ 10 kW. In the islanded
KQP = 100KQI and the other parameters are shown in Table 1. mode, the DGs can compensate the active power shortage quickly
From the figures, we can see that the system is still stable when to maintain the active power balance. Also, the active power can be
the control parameters vary in large range. That is, the stability of shared according to 2 : 1 accurately by DGs. That is, before the
the system is upgraded with the proposed triple droop control load step change, DG1 ≈ 16.3 kW and DG2 ≈ 32.5 kW, after the
method. load step change, DG1 ≈ 61.25 kW and DG2 ≈ 30.5 kW. Fig. 6b is
a larger version of Fig. 6a when the load increases, it shows that
the running time of the active power regulation is about 170 ms.
4 HIL tests Fig. 6c shows the output reactive power changes of DGs. The
In this paper, HIL tests depicted in Fig. 5 are designed to verify the DGs can output specified reactive power accurately in the grid-
effectiveness of the proposed control method. As Fig. 5a shows, connected mode, that is, DG1 ≈ 14 kVar and DG2 ≈ 7 kVar, which
the studied microgrid system contains two DGs and one load. The the conventional droop control is hard to realise. In the islanded
HIL tests are conducted through the RT/LAB and STM32F407 mode, the DGs can compensate the reactive power shortage
MCUs. The configuration of the HIL tests is shown in Fig. 5b. quickly to maintain the reactive power balance. Before the load
The rated bus voltage V b∗ is 311 V and the rated frequency f ∗ is step change, DG1 ≈ 23 kVar and DG2 ≈ 12 kVar, after the load step
50 Hz, the rated load power is 51 kW + j33 kVar under the rated change, DG1 ≈ 51 kVar and DG2 ≈ 29 kVar. Due to the voltage
voltage and frequency. In the grid-connected mode, the DGs drop across the line impedance, the reactive power sharing is not
provide power about 30 kW + j21 kVar and the rest power is very accurate. Further, because the line impedance consumes some
provided by the utility. The active power and reactive power reactive power, the total reactive power of two DGs is bigger than
sharing between the DG1 and DG2 are both 2 : 1. The other the load reactive power.
parameters are shown in Table 1. Fig. 6d shows the load power changes. Due to the droop
Fig. 6 shows the results of the proposed triple droop control. control, the bus voltage is lower than the rated value. Therefore,
The microgrid is started up in the grid-connected mode and then is the load power is lower than the rated power. Fig. 6e shows the bus
switched into the islanded mode. Furthermore, a load step change voltage changes, only the difference ΔV b between the actual bus
occurs in the islanded mode and the load power increases to 102  voltage V b and the rated bus voltage V b∗ is represented. From
kW + j66 kVar under the rated voltage and frequency. Fig. 6a Fig. 6e, it can be concluded that the bus voltage can be maintained
shows the output active power changes of DGs. The DGs can within reasonable range (−7% ∼ +7%). Fig. 6f shows the frequency
changes, similarly, only the difference Δ f between the actual
frequency f and the rated frequency f ∗ is represented. From Fig. 6f,
Table 1 System parameters we can see that the frequency can be maintained within reasonable
Parameters DG1 DG2 range (−0.2 ∼ +0.2 Hz) too.
Rline /Lline 0.5 mΩ/1.5 mH 0.5 mΩ/1.5 mH In addition, a contrast experiment between the conventional
Rg /Lg 0.1 mΩ/0.5 mH droop control method and the proposed triple droop control method
is conducted to show the improved performance. In the contrast
LC filters 3 mH/2 mF 3 mH/2 mF
experiment, the outer loop is changed into the conventional droop
parasitic resistance 2 mΩ 2 mΩ control and the output power sharing between the DG1 and DG2 is
P∗ 20 kW 10 kW 2 : 1. Specifically, f i = f ∗ + mi Pi∗ − Pi , V i = V ∗ + ni Qi∗ − Qi ,
mδ 1/4 × 10−2 rad/kW 1/2 × 10−2 rad/kW where m1 = 1/12 × 10−2 Hz/kW, m2 = 1/6 × 10−2 Hz/kW and
mf −2
1/12 × 10 Hz/kW 1/6 × 10−2 Hz/kW n1 = 1/4 V/kVar, n2 = 1/2 V/kVar. The inner loop and other
Q ∗ 14 kVar 7 kVar parameters are the same as Table 1. Fig. 7 shows the results of the
conventional droop control.
n 4 kVar/V 2 kVar/V
Fig. 7a shows the output active power changes of DGs. The
KQP 5 × 10−4 V/Var 5 × 10−4 V/Var DGs can output specified active power accurately in the grid-
KQI 5 × 10−2 V/Var ⋅ s 5 × 10−2 V/Var ⋅ s connected mode, that is, DG1 ≈ 20 kW and DG2 ≈ 10 kW. In the
[V L, V H ] [305, 315 V] [305, 315 V] islanded mode, the two DGs can share the active power according
to 2 : 1, but the dynamics are very slow. As shown in Fig. 7b which
τ 0.02 s 0.02 s
is a large version of Fig. 7a when the load power increases, the
KvP, KvI 0.4 A/V, 100 A/V ⋅ s 0.4 A/V, 100 A/V ⋅ s running time of the active power is ∼600 ms, which is much longer
KiP 2 V/A 2 V/A than the running time shown in Fig. 6b.

Fig. 5  HIL tests

(a) Studied ac microgrid system, (b) HIL tests setup

1710 IET Power Electron., 2017, Vol. 10 Iss. 13, pp. 1705-1713
© The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2017
Fig. 6  Dynamics of the system based on the proposed triple droop control
(a) Output active power of the DGs, (b) Active power regulation when the load increases, (c) Output reactive power of the DGs, (d) Load power, (e) Changes of the bus voltage
ΔV b(ΔV b = V b − V b∗), (f) Changes of the frequency Δ f (Δ f = f − f ∗)
Fig. 7c shows the output reactive power changes of DGs. The
DGs cannot output specified reactive power accurately in the grid-
connected mode. Further, the reactive power sharing in the
islanded mode is worse than that in Fig. 6c. In conclusion, the
reactive power regulation of the conventional droop control is
worse than that of the proposed triple droop control.
Fig. 7d shows the load power changes. Because of the droop
control, the bus voltage is much lower than the rated value.
Therefore, the load power is much lower than the rated power. In
addition, the power comes down more drastically than the load
power shown in Fig. 6d. Fig. 7e shows the bus voltage changes,
only the difference ΔV b between the actual bus voltage V b and the
rated bus voltage V b∗ is represented. From Fig. 7e, it can be
concluded that the bus voltage drop is very big and cannot be
maintained within reasonable range (−7 ∼ +7%). Especially when
the load increases, the voltage has reached the threshold value
(290 ∼ 332 V). Fig. 7f shows the frequency changes, also only the
difference Δ f between the actual frequency f and the rated
IET Power Electron., 2017, Vol. 10 Iss. 13, pp. 1705-1713
© The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2017
frequency f ∗ is represented. The frequency can be maintained
within reasonable range (−0.2 ∼ +0.2 Hz).
From the above results of the contrast experiment, it can be
concluded that the proposed triple droop control method can
improve the performance of the system compared with the
conventional droop control method.
5 Conclusion
A novel triple droop control method for ac microgrids is researched
in this paper, which consists of three parts. The angle droop and the
frequency droop are adopted to control the active power in
coordination, while the modified voltage droop is used to control
the reactive power. There are several improvements in this
proposed triple droop control method compared with the
conventional droop control. First, the dynamics of active power
regulation are enhanced because of the angle droop. Second, the
stability of the system is upgraded and the droop coefficients can
vary in greater range. Third, the accuracy of reactive power
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Fig. 7  Dynamics of the system based on the conventional droop control
(a) Output active power of the DGs, (b) Active power regulation when the load increases, (c) Output reactive power of the DGs, (d) Load power, (e) Changes of the bus voltage
ΔV b(ΔV b = V b − V b∗), (f) Changes of the frequency Δ f (Δ f = f − f ∗)
regulation is improved, especially in the grid-connected mode, the
DGs can output the specified reactive power with the modified
voltage droop, which benefits the economic dispatch of the
microgrid. However, the accuracy of reactive power regulation is
mainly dependent on the stability of the grid voltage. If the grid
voltage changes out of the allowable variation range, the reactive
power cannot be regulated accurately in the grid-connected mode
anymore. In addition, in the paper, only the stability of the single-
machine-infinite-bus system is analysed. However, the detailed
stability analysis for the microgrid system consisting of multiple
droop-based DGs is still not solved well, which is a very
challenging problem and is also our future work.
6 Acknowledgments
This work was supported in part by the National Key R&D
Program of China (grant no. 2017YFB0903303), in part by the
Zhejiang Provincial Key Research and Development Program
(grant no. 2017C01039), in part by the National Natural Science
1712
Foundation of China (grant no. 51377142) and in part by the
Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (grant
no. LY16E070002).
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