Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx

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Materials Today: Proceedings

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/matpr

Current droop control of parallel inverters in an autonomous microgrid

Venkatesh Boddapati a, T. Sathesh Kumar b, N. Prakash c, B. Gunapriya d,⇑
a
Department of EEE, BMS College of Engineering, Bengaluru 560019, India
b
Department of EEE, Dr.Mahalingam College of Engineering and Technology, Pollachi 642003, India
c
Department of EEE, Kumaraguru College of Technology, Coimbatore 641049, India
d
Department of EEE, New Horizon College of Engineering, Bangalore, India

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The load sharing analysis in an autonomous microgrid (MG) with renewable energy sources (RES) is an
Received 3 September 2020 important issue. The inverter is employed to integrate a distributed generation system to the utility grid,
Received in revised form 18 September or to run the load available in the microgrid is an essential concept in the autonomous microgrid. In that
2020
situation, there is a growing demand in developing a proper control strategy to draw current with fewer
Accepted 20 September 2020
Available online xxxx
distortion from the inverter, and there is a condition to connect two or more sources in parallel for sat-
isfying the load requirements (sharing of loads). To connect two or more DG units to the load, there is a
requirement of paralleling the inverters. This paper presents the development of a hybrid controller for
Keywords:
Solar PV
load sharing from different DGs with the help of a parallel-connected inverters interface. The proposed
Parallel inverters systems help improve the quality of power, reliability, and economical operation of the autonomous
Battery microgrid.
Microgrid Ó 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Renewable energy sources Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the International Confer-
ence on Advances in Materials Research – 2019.

1. Introduction
In this decade, the exponential increase in parallel inverters for
providing unremitting electrical power to loads is very common.
Moreover, with the ever-growing power demand, a paralleling
inverter should be deployed. The power capability can be aug-
mented by linking inverters in parallel. In addition, the paralleling
of inverter modules offer several advantages, such as increasing
system efficiency, reducing output current ripple, and improving
the system reliability. Therefore, a proper control strategy must
be adopted to make parallel inverters operate properly while shar-
ing the load. The droop method is typically assumed to control par-
allel inverters without the physical links. Here separate controllers
are deployed per unit [1–5] (Table 1).
The renewable power sources are imperative for power genera-
tion because of its characteristics. PV systems are widely labored
for nursing power to the grid (or) load directly (autonomous mode
of operation). The integration of RES and utility grid will deliver a
variety of benefits to the concern. In such a condition, a three-
phase inverter connected amongst the photovoltaic source to load
or the grid is essential. The features desirable for such inverter are
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: gunapriya1978@gmail.com (B. Gunapriya).
low line current distortion with high power factor, high efficiency,
and high switching frequencies [6–8].
Along with the implementation of classical PID current con-
troller for inverter and hysteresis current controller was also devel-
oped, such conventional hysteresis controller was generally used
for their ruggedness and simplicity. In addition to that hysteresis,
the controller gives an excellent transient response, and it does
not require a triangular carrier signal for the generation of trigger-
ing pulses. These controllers ensure current control without having
any knowledge about load model and load parameters. However,
the disadvantage in this is the controller is converter switching fre-
quency varies concerning error amplitude, and thus the current
waveform contains many harmonics. Concerning the above scenar-
io, this paper proposes the current control technique. It consists of
a simple PI controller and ruggedness of a hysteresis limiter. Due to
a combination of a PI controller with hysteresis, zero steady-state
error, and excellent transient response are together obtained in
the proposed hybrid controller [9–15].
2. Block diagram of the proposed system
Fig. 1 represents the proposed system, consisting of two three-
phase inverters and one diesel generator connected to the load.
Inverter-1 is directly connected to the grid, and inverter-2 is con-

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2020.09.496
2214-7853/Ó 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the International Conference on Advances in Materials Research – 2019.

Please cite this article as: V. Boddapati, T. Sathesh Kumar, N. Prakash et al., Current droop control of parallel inverters in an autonomous microgrid, Mate-
rials Today: Proceedings, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2020.09.496
V. Boddapati, T. Sathesh Kumar, N. Prakash et al. Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx

Table 1 as a standby source, which is used only during peak load

Technical details of the components.
Name of the components Rating
PV Array Power rating 48
Open circuit voltage 800 V
Short circuit current 60 A
Series resistance 0.762 O
Shunt resistance 1*e12
Three-phase inverter IGBT switch 1200 V, 100 A
Battery 500 V, 70 Ah
LCL filter 5 mH, 1 mF
Load Variable up to 30 KW
conditions.
4.1. Case 1
When both the inverters are operating
From the waveforms obtained, it can be analyzed that both the
inverters are sharing equal current
From Figs. 6 and 7, when there is a change in reference current
or change in the load, then the controller responds instantaneously
and supplies load requirements at that particular instant
(Figs. 8–10).

nected with a DC/DC converter and battery. The essential require-

4.2. Case 2
ment of battery is to store energy during the lightly loaded condi-
tions and supply during peak load and medium load conditions.
When the load demand on the autonomous microgrid is high
The present scheme consisting of a diesel generator, a diesel gener-
during that particular instant, all the sources are operated to meet
ator is required to meet the peak load demand conditions only.
the load requirement. This condition is called a peak load
Each VSI consist of 6 IGBTs (S1-S6) with a reverse diode across each
condition.
device. It consists of a PI controller connected in series with a hys-
From Figs. 11 and 12, when there is a change in reference cur-
teresis block to implement the current control of VSI.
rent or change in the load, then the controller responds instanta-
neously and supplies load requirements at that particular instant
(Figs. 13 and 14).
3. Proposed controller

Fig. 2 represents the structure of the anticipated current con-
troller. The prime motive of the current controller is to strengthen
the inverter output current and track the reference current taken
from the grid. The proposed controller consisting of a current ref-
erence taken from the grid and the actual inverter’s output current,
then the generated error signal is fed to the PI controller with a
load reference, and the PI controller output is given to the hystere-
sis controller, which generates a switching signal for the inverters
(Figs. 3–5).
4. Investigation of the proposed systems
The proposed system is consisting of three sources, Source one
PV with battery connected inverter, source two consisting of the
second inverter, which is supplied by PV. A diesel generator acts
4.3. Case 3
During the nighttime, when the load on the microgrid is less
and PV power generation is not available, during the particular
instance, the load requirement is met by the battery.
5. Conclusion
This paper deals with the designing of a hybrid controller for
the parallel inverter in an autonomous microgrid has been imple-
mented. The proposed hybrid control techniques designed based
on a PI controller with a hysteresis limiter has been applied to a
three-phase full-bridge inverter connected between PV source
and load. The hybrid control technique tested for three load condi-
tions peak load, medium load, and low load condition. The result
was found to better comparing to existing Proportional (P),

Fig. 1. Block diagram of the proposed system.

2
V. Boddapati, T. Sathesh Kumar, N. Prakash et al. Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx

Fig. 2. Structure of the controller.

Fig. 3. Phase voltages of the inverter connected in parallel.

Fig. 4. Output current of Inverter I.

Fig. 5. Output current of Inverter II.

Fig. 6. Inverter I current response for change in the reference current.

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V. Boddapati, T. Sathesh Kumar, N. Prakash et al. Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx

Fig. 7. Inverter II current response for change in the reference current.

Fig. 8. Inverter I current.

Fig. 9. Inverter II current.

Fig. 10. Diesel Generator output current.

Fig. 11. The inverter I current response for change in reference to current.

4
V. Boddapati, T. Sathesh Kumar, N. Prakash et al.
Fig. 12. Inverter II current response for change in reference to current.
Fig. 13. Inverter current when it is supplied by the battery.
Fig. 14. Inverter I current response for change in the reference current.
proportional-integral (PI), and Proportional integral and derivative
control techniques. Simulations results show that with the pro-
posed method, parallel units can share linear and nonlinear load
properly, reliability of the supply and economic performance of
the system is also improving. The effect of load on the inverters
at different load conditions is also analyzed.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Venkatesh Boddapati: Conceptualization, Methodology, Soft-
ware. T. Sathesh Kumar: Data curation, Writing - original draft.
N. Prakash: Writing - review & editing. B. Gunapriya: Writing -
review & editing.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared
to influence the work reported in this paper.
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