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Energy Reports 8 (2022) 739–750

www.elsevier.com/locate/egyr

2022 The 4th International Conference on Clean Energy and Electrical Systems (CEES 2022),
2–4 April, 2022, Tokyo, Japan

Distributed control strategy of DC microgrid based on consistency

theory
Nannan Zhang, Dongsheng Yang ∗, Huaguang Zhang, Yanhong Luo
Department of Electric Engineering, Northeastern University, Shenyang 110819, China
Received 18 May 2022; accepted 19 May 2022
Available online xxxx

Abstract
In order to solve the cooperative control problem among multiple distributed units in a distributed DC microgrid, a distributed
control based on a consensus algorithm is firstly proposed, which can realize power distribution among distributed units. The
distributed voltage control of the observer will generate steady-state errors due to problems such as time delay initial value of
the observer. A voltage optimization control strategy based on the PI consistency algorithm is further proposed, which converts
the voltage control problem into an optimization problem, and the optimization goal is to ensure the deviation sum of each
busbar from the rated value is the smallest, and the stability of this method is proved. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed
method is verified by MATLAB/Simulink software.
© 2022 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 4th International Conference on Clean Energy and Electrical Systems, CEES, 2022.

Keywords: DC microgrid; Distributed optimal control; Consensus algorithm; Multi-agent system

1. Introduction
The continuous penetration of distributed generators (DGs) dominated by renewable energy in the power grid
has brought many problems to the safe and stable operation of the power grid. To solve the stable operation problem
caused by the grid connection of a large number of relatively scattered and diverse distributed power sources, various
control theories are gradually applied to the control of microgrids.
With the growth of energy demand and the emphasis on environmental protection issues, the development
and utilization of renewable energy have attracted more and more attention [1]. The development of microgrid
technology can improve the penetration rate of renewable energy in the power grid [2], and promote the
modernization and intelligence of traditional power grids [3]. Compared with the AC microgrid, the DC microgrid
can access the above-mentioned DC loads and power sources more flexibly and efficiently without the necessity for
AC–DC, DC–AC conversion modules [4], the microgrid structure is shown in Fig. 1. In addition, the DC microgrid
does not have the frequency and reactive power regulation problems in the AC microgrid. Therefore, DC microgrid
technology has received increasingly widespread research and attention [5].
∗ Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: zhang2549164366@163.com (N. Zhang), yangdongsheng@mail.neu.edu.cn (D. Yang).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.egyr.2022.05.189
2352-4847/© 2022 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 4th International Conference on Clean Energy and Electrical Systems,
CEES, 2022.
N. Zhang, D. Yang, H. Zhang et al. Energy Reports 8 (2022) 739–750

Fig. 1. Configuration of DC microgrids.

In a DC microgrid with multiple energy storage units, due to the existence of line impedance, droop control
needs to adopt a large droop coefficient to ensure the rationality of power distribution [6]. However, the increase of
the droop coefficient will lead to the steady state of the DC bus voltage of each unit. The deviation value increases,
thus affecting the system stability. Therefore, a secondary control strategy is required to restore the bus voltage and
improve power distribution.
Regarding the distributed control of DC microgrid, there have been many achievements in recent years. Ref. [7]
proposed a secondary control strategy based on voltage and slope adjustment to improve the performance of
droop-controlled DC microgrids. Ref. [8] proposed a fixed-time-based secondary control strategy to realize the
voltage–frequency recovery control of islanded microgrids. Ref. [9] proposed a distributed multi-agent-based
microgrid secondary control strategy to restore the microgrid bus voltage to the nominal value. Ref. [10] proposes a
secondary voltage control method for a DC microgrid to restore the bus voltage of a droop-controlled DC microgrid.
However, the above control strategy will have control errors when the input signal is disturbed, including the
uncertain initial value of the observer and the delay of the transmission signal. Ref. [11] proposes adding an anti-
interference link on the basis of the voltage observer, but it can only solve the initial value problem of the observer
and cannot overcome the influence of time delay. At the same time, the integrator included in the anti-interference
link may introduce new initial value problems. Ref. [12] proposes to design an average bus voltage observer based
on the dynamic average consistency algorithm, which achieves the effect of optimizing bus voltage control, but does
not consider the power circulation between multiple groups of hybrid energy storage systems and batteries.
To sum up, the main contributions of this paper are:
(1) In this paper, a distributed control system is proposed for an isolated DC microgrid with multiple photovoltaic
energy storage units, which can consider the initial value of the controller and the transmission delay, that
can simultaneously control the power distribution of each distributed unit and the average bus voltage is
proposed. Strategy.
(2) By analyzing the influence of the initial value of the voltage controller and the transmission delay on the
control effect, this paper further proposes a voltage optimization control strategy based on the PI consistency
algorithm, which makes each bus voltage deviate from the rated value without changing the power distribution
principle. minimum.

2. Distributed control strategy based on a consensus algorithm

Traditional centralized control has a large investment in communication equipment, lines, etc., and has a high
degree of dependence on the control center. Its failure is likely to cause the entire system to be paralyzed, so the
reliability is not high. The distributed control algorithm based on finite time consistency only needs to communicate
with its neighboring agents to reach the consistency of the global state in a finite time, thereby realizing global
control, and it can be fast, economical, and robust. To better adapt to the needs of the microgrid, it is considered to
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apply a distributed control algorithm based on finite time consistency to the hierarchical control of the microgrid. In
the traditional microgrid control, to automatically realize the power distribution, the DC voltage control unit often
adopts droop control. However, because the droop control is a one-time control, it will cause the DC bus voltage
deviation and affect the voltage quality [13]. Therefore, it can be controlled in the system-level control. The voltage
is controlled twice to increase the voltage level.

2.1. Graph theory

Conventionally, for a microgrid system containing n DGs, if DG is regarded as a node in an agent communication
network, its communication topology can be represented by an undirected graph G = {V , E}. Where V =
{v1 , v2 , . . . , vn } represents
( the )collection of its nodes, n is the number of nodes in the graph; E ⊆ V × V represents
the set of edges, ei j = vi , v j represents the edges of the graph; in graph G, the adjacency matrix A = ai j n×n
( )

is usually used to describe the relationship between nodes, where ai j represents nodes i to The connection weight
of node j. If the node i can receive the information )} ai j >0, otherwise ai j = 0. For any node vi ,
of( node j, then
define its neighbor node-set as N i (G, i) = v j ∈ V : vi , v j ∈ E . If there is at least one communication path
{

between any DGs in graph G, the graph is said to be connected. This article assumes that the connection weight
between connected nodes is 1. In agent communication, the Laplacian matrix is∑generally used to describe the
communication between agents, that is L = li j ∈ Rn×n , where li j = −ai j , lii = nj=1, j̸=i ai j .
( )

For a multi-agent system composed of n agents, a continuous-time consistency algorithm can be expressed
N
∑
ai j xi − x j i = 1, 2, . . . , N
( )
ẋi = − (1)
j=1

where xi is the state variable of the agent i. Each agent can only communicate with its neighbors. The state of the
agent depends on its own current state and the current state of its neighboring agents.
As long as the communication topology G of the network includes a directed spanning tree,⏐ that is, there⏐ is a
root node with at least one directed path with all other nodes, then the Eq. (1) satisfies limt→∞ ⏐xi (t) − x j (t)⏐ = 0
when t → ∞. Therefore, the communication topology between distributed units designed in this paper is shown in
Fig. 2.

Fig. 2. Communication network of multiple DGs.

2.2. Distributed control strategy

For this kind of distributed system without a common bus, the control target of the bus voltage can be set to
control the average value of each bus voltage to reach the rated value. A common implementation is to use a voltage
observer to calculate the average value of the bus voltage of the system. The dynamic expression of the voltage
observer based on the consensus algorithm is
∫ ∑N
vavgi = vbusi − ai j vavgi − vavgj
( )
(2)
j=i

where vbusi is the port bus voltage; vavgi is the observed average bus voltage using the voltage observer.
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Literature [14] proves

⏐ that as long as⏐ the network communication topology includes a directed spanning tree,
then t → ∞, limt→∞ ⏐vavgi (t) − vavg j (t)⏐ = 0, and converge to the arithmetic mean of vbusi , which is
N
1 ∑
lim vavgi (t) = lim vbusi (t) (3)
t→∞ N t→∞ i=1
For battery energy storage systems, the state-of-charge SoC is a key indicator to measure the degree of system
charge and discharge, which is calculated as follows:
∫
1
Sbati = 1 − i bati dt (4)
Cbati
where Sbati is SoC of the system; Cbati is the nominal capacity of the system; i bati is the battery output current.
When the battery is charged and discharged, each battery needs to be maintained at a relatively average capacity
level, to avoid overcharge and over-discharge of a single battery and improve the overall life of the BSU. However,
if the SoC of each battery is directly controlled to be consistent, if the initial value of the SoC is different, it will
cause the batteries to charge and discharge each other, which will cause circulating current. Therefore, to avoid
mutual charging and discharging between batteries, this article defines the state variables that control the power
distribution, as follows:
PBSUi
γi = (5)
F (Sbati )
where PBSUi is the output power of the energy storage unit; F (Sbati ) is a function related to the state of charge Sbati ,
defined as
Cbati (Sbati − SbatL ) i f PBSUi ≥ 0
{
F (Sbati ) = (6)
Cbati (SbatH − Sbati ) i f PBSUi < 0
where SbatL is the lower limit reference value of SoC when the battery is discharged; SbatH is the upper limit reference
value of SoC when charging the battery; F (Sbati ) is the actual remaining available capacity.
When the state variable γi of each node tends to be the same, the unbalanced power can be distributed among the
batteries according to the real-time state of the SoC. Taking the discharge situation as an example, a battery with a
large SoC has a large output power and a rapid SoC decline rate; while a battery with a small SoC has a low output
power and a slow decline rate of the SoC. The SoC of each battery will not be the same, but it will tend to converge
in the same direction. The closer to the limit value, the faster the convergence speed. The distributed control based
on the consensus algorithm adopts a hierarchical control structure as shown in Fig. 3. Among them, the primary
control adopts the traditional droop control and does not rely on communication; the secondary control adopts the
power controller and voltage controller designed based on the consensus algorithm to correct the reference voltage
value of the primary control, thereby realizing power distribution and bus voltage control.

Fig. 3. Hierarchical control strategy.

The reference value of the primary control voltage corrected by the secondary control is
vbusi
∗
= vref + ∆vPi + ∆vUi (7)
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where ∆vPi is the power correction item, ∆vUi is the voltage correction item, vref is the bus voltage rating.
In a steady state, the port bus voltage is

vbusi = vbusi
∗
− RVi i oBi (8)

where vbusi∗
is the bus voltage reference value after the secondary control correction; RVi is the droop coefficient;
i oBi is the output current of the system.

Fig. 4. Distributed secondary control scheme.

The distributed secondary control block diagram based on the consensus algorithm is shown in Fig. 4. The power
distribution state variable γi of each BSU obtains the error signal ei through information exchange.
N
∑
ai j γi − γ j
( )
ei = − (9)
j=1

The error ei passes through the integrator to obtain the power distribution correction term ∆vPi .
The transfer function H P (s) of the power controller can be expressed as
kIPi
H P (s) = (10)
s
where kIPi is the integral gain.
If the state variables γi of the two BSUs are not equal, the error will be integrated and amplified by the integrator
to adjust the reference value of the bus voltage until the γi of all energy storage units reach the same value. In the
same way, each BSU node uses the algorithm of formula (2) for information exchange and iteration, and an average
voltage observation value that tends to be consistent can be obtained. The difference between the average voltage
observation value and the rated value is input to the voltage PI controller for adjustment, the voltage correction
term ∆vUi of the DC bus voltage can be obtained, and the transfer function HV (s) of the voltage controller is
kIVi
HV (s) = kPVi + (11)
s
where kPVi and kIVi are the proportional coefficient and the integral coefficient, respectively
According to formula (10) and formula (11), the correction terms ∆vPi and ∆vUi can be obtained as
∫ ∑ N
ai j γi − γ j
( )
∆vPi = −kIP (12)
j=i
∫
∆vUi = kPV vref − vavgi + kIV vref − vavgi
( ) ( )
(13)

Under the combined action of the primary droop control and the secondary distributed control, the energy storage
unit can quickly respond to power changes in the system, while ensuring that the output power of each energy storage
unit is proportionally distributed according to the SoC, and maintaining the average voltage of the system Rated
value.
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2.3. Optimal voltage control based on a consensus algorithm

Distributed microgrid with communication has certain advantages in voltage and current control, but the influence
of transmission delay on system stability cannot be ignored. The distributed control based on the voltage observer
described above uses a single-integral consensus algorithm, which has poor anti-interference ability. When the initial
value of the integrator is not zero or there is a delay in communication, the system cannot be accurately estimated.
Actual average bus voltage. Therefore, this paper proposes a new control idea, that is, the average voltage control
is reduced to an optimization problem, and the PI consistency control is used to optimize the solution [15].
The improved distributed optimization control strategy still uses the hierarchical control structure shown in Fig. 3,
and the second power control strategy remains unchanged, the same as Fig. 4, except for the improvement of the
secondary voltage control strategy.
In the previous control scheme, the average voltage of each bus is obtained through the voltage observer, and then
the average voltage is controlled at the rated value through the PI controller, to achieve an overall increase in the
voltage of each bus. Another way to achieve this control goal is to Control the deviation and minimum deviation of
each bus from the rated value. According to the hierarchical control strategy shown in Fig. 3, the deviation between
the port voltage of each energy storage unit and the rated voltage is composed of the power control compensation
amount ∆vPi , the voltage control compensation amount ∆vUi , and the droop control deviation RVi i oBi . Therefore,
this paper designs the optimization goal of voltage control is
N
1∑
min J = f i (∆vUi ) = (∆vUi + ∆vPi − i oBi RVi )2 (14)
2 i=1
The distributed optimization problem of N-node network can be described as
N
∑
min J = f i (xi ) (15)
i=1
where f i (xi ) is the optimization function of the node. Only related to the node’s state variable xi
In order to solve the optimization problem of formula (14), literature [16] proposed the following PI consistency
algorithm:
∑ ) ∑ (
ci j ε j − εi + u i
( )
ẋi = bi j x j − xi −
j∈Ni j∈Ni
∑ (16)
ε̇i =
( )
ci j x j − xi
j∈Ni

where u i is an external control input; εi is an additional state variable; bi j and ci j are communication weight
coefficients corresponding to xi and εi , respectively.
Suppose 1 f 1 , f 2 , . . . , f N is a continuously differentiable convex function, and their gradient ∇ f i (i =
1, 2, . . . , N ) is local Lipschitz.
Suppose 2 that the communication topology graph G N is symmetrical ∑ N and (connected.
Under the premise of suppose 1 and suppose 2, if ∇ f (x ∗ ) : = i=1
)
∇ f i xi∗ = 0, the optimal solution x ∗ of
Eq. (14) can be obtained.
Aiming at the voltage optimization control goal of Eq. (13), according to the PI consistency algorithm proposed
in [17], the following voltage control algorithm can be designed:
⎧ ∑ ) ∑ (
∆v̇Ui = ci j ∆εUj − ∆εUi − (∆vUii + ∆vPi − i oBi RVi )
( )
⎪
⎪ bi j ∆vUj − ∆vUi −
⎨
j∈Ni j∈Ni
∑ ( ) (17)
⎩∆ε̇Ui = ci j ∆vUj − ∆vUii
⎪
⎪
j∈Ni

where is ∆εUi an additional state variable.

Write formula (17) in matrix form, there are:
∆v̇U = −L B ∆vU + L C ∆εU − ∇ f (∆vU )
{
(18)
∆ε̇U = −L C ∆vU
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where: ∆vU is the voltage control compensation vector; ∆εU is the intermediate variable vector; L B and L C are the
Laplace matrices corresponding to bi j and ci j , respectively.
∆vU = [∆vU1 , ∆vU2 , . . . , ∆vUN ]T (19)
∆εU = [∆εU1 , ∆εU2 , . . . , ∆εUN ] T
(20)
∇ f (∆v U ) = [∇ f 1 (∆vU1 ) , ∇ f 2 (∆vU2 ) , . . . , ∇ f N (∆vUN )] T
(21)

Lemma 1. If the communication topology is connected, the Laplace matrix L has an eigenvalue of 0, and the
corresponding eigenvector is 1N , that is L1N = 0N .
When the system reaches a steady-state, from Eq. (18), we can get:
− L B ∆v U + L C ∆εU − ∇ f (∆v U ) = 0 (22)
− L C ∆v U = 0 (23)
For a connected and symmetric communication topology, Laplace matrices L B and L C are symmetrical. From
Lemma 1, we can see that (L B 1N )T = 1TN L B = 0, (L C 1N )T = 1TN L C = 0. Therefore, Eq. (22) is multiplied by 1TN
to obtain:
N
∑
1TN ∇ f (∆v U ) = (∆vUi + ∆vPi − i oBi RVi ) = 0 (24)
i=1

Eq. (20) shows that when the system reaches the steady⏐ state, Eq. (13) can⏐ reach the optimal solution. At the
same time, it can be obtained from Eq. (19). When t → ∞, ⏐∆vUi (t) − ∆vUj (t)⏐ → 0, it indicates the compensation
of each energy storage voltage controller in the steady-state. The quantity ∆vUi (i = 1, 2, . . . , N ) is equal and does
not affect the power distribution effect determined by the power controller and droop control.
∑ NSince the port voltage of each energy storage unit in the steady-state can be expressed as voBi = vref + ∇ f i ,
i=1 ∇ f i = 0∑ means that the average value of the port voltage of each energy storage unit in the steady-state is
vref , that is N1 i=1
N
voBi = vref , indicating that the optimized control algorithm can be averaged with the traditional
voltage observer observation The method of directly controlling the voltage value achieves the same goal.

2.4. Stability analysis

The average voltage consistency control based on the voltage observer relies on the voltage observer to estimate
the average voltage of the system [18]. When the estimated value is inaccurate, the control goal of adjusting the
average voltage to the rated value cannot be achieved. Regardless of the single-integral consistency algorithm
adopted by the voltage observer or the PI consistency algorithm adopted by the voltage optimization control, in
actual application, it is unavoidable to face the problems of the initial value of the integrator and the delay of
communication [19]. In response to these situations, this paper will analyze the control characteristics of the control
method in dealing with time delay and uncertain initial value.
When there is a transmission delay in the communication between adjacent nodes, the dynamic characteristics
of the voltage observer shown in Eq. (2) become
N
∑
v̇avgi (t) = v̇busi (t) − ai j vavgi − vavgj t − τi j
[ ( )]
(25)
j=1

where τi j is the communication delay between adjacent nodes.

Carrying out the Laplace transform to Eq. (25), there are:
sv avg (s) + v avg (0) = sv bus (s) + v bus (0) − L(s)v avg (s) + R(s) (26)
where v avg (0) and v bus (0) are the initial values of vectors v avg (t) and v bus (t) at the time t = 0, respectively,
{ }
L(s) = li j (s) N ×N (27)
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⎧ −sτ j j
⎨−a
⎪ ije i ̸= j
N
li j (s) = ∑ (28)
⎪
⎩ ai j i= j
i=1

In formula (26), R(s) = [R1 (s), R2 (s), . . . , R N (s)]T is the additional integral term introduced by time delay τi j ,
and the expression is
N ∫ 0
e−s (τi j +t ) vavgj (t)dt
∑
Ri (s) = ai j (29)
j=1 −τi j

Assuming that the initial value of the integrator in Eq. (2) is not zero, that is, v avg (0) and v bus (0) are not equal,
and the transmission delay between nodes is a fixed delay, that is τi j = τ and τ are constants, and the Laplace
matrix L(s) is expanded by Taylor series, have:
s2
L(s) = L(0) + s L 1 (0) + L 2 (0) + · · · (30)
2!
where L k (0) is the k-order derivative of L(s) in s = 0.
According to formula (26),{using [ the final value theorem,] we can get:
L(0)
lim slN v avg (s) = lim l N −
T T
+ L 1 (0) + · · · sv avg (s)+ R(s) + v bus (0) − v avg (0) + sv bus (s)
}
s→0 s→0 s
(31)
= l TN R(0) + v bus (0) − v avg (0) + v ss T ss
[ ]
bus − l N L 1 (0)v avg

where: l N is the eigenvector when the eigenvalue of the L(0) matrix is 0; R(0) is the value of R(s) at s = 0.
Using Gael’s disc theorem, it is proved that formula (25) can reach asymptotic consistency at t → ∞, that is
limt→∞ vavg
ss ss
(t) = ⟨vavg ⟩ × 1N . Under this premise, the steady-state value of vavg i can be obtained according to
formula (31):
l TN R(0) + v bus (0) − v avg (0) + v ss
[ ]
ss bus
⟨v avg ⟩ = (32)
l TN [I N + L 1 (0)]
It can be seen from Eq. (32) that when there is a communication delay τi j , although vavg i can reach the gradual
consistency, the steady-state value of its convergence is no longer the actual voltage average value, it becomes the
communication time shown in Eq. (32), it is a function related to the communication delay τi j . At the same time,
the initial value of the integrator will also affect the convergence value. Only when the communication delay τi j = 0
and the initial value of the integrator is zero, can R(0) = 0, L 1 (0) = 0, and v bus (0) = v avg (0) be satisfied. At this
time, vavg i can converge to the actual average voltage, namely:

avg = l N v bus
v ss T ss
(33)
Compared with the method based on the voltage observer, the voltage optimization control method proposed in
this paper does not require the convergence value of the control input ∆vU i in the steady state, and only requires that
∆vU i be consistent in the steady state. In the presence of communication delay, the Laplace transform of Eq. (17)
can be obtained:
s∆v U (s) + ∆v U (0) = −L B (s)∆v U (s) + RBV (s) + L C (s)∆εU (s) + RCε (s) − ∇ f (∆v U (s)) (34)
s∆εU (s) + ∆ε U (0) = −L C (s)v U (s) + RCu (s) (35)
where: L B (s) and L C (s) are the L(s) matrices corresponding to bi j and ci j respectively; the definitions of RBV (s),
RCε (s) and RCu (s) are the same as R(s).
Also consider the case where the initial value of the integrator is not zero. According to Eq. (33), the steady-state
value of l TN ∇ f (∆v U (t)) can be obtained by using the final value theorem as follows:
lim l T ∇ f (∆v U (t)) = lim l TN [−s I N − L B (s)] s∆v U (s) + lim l TN L C (s) × s∆εU (s) = 0 (36)
t→∞ N s→0 s→0

It can be seen from Eq. (36) that as long as the system reaches a steady state, that is, ∆vU i can be asymptotically
consistent, the steady state ∆vU is still the optimal solution of Eq. (17).
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The final convergence value has nothing to do with the initial value of the integrator and the size of the delay. It
should be noted that the application of the final value theorem is based on the premise that the system can converge
under a fixed time delay. Both Eqs. (3) and (16) are only stable within a certain time delay range. The delay range is
usually large, and the specific time delay stability boundary is complicated to solve, so this article does not analyze
it in detail.
Through the analysis of system stability, the voltage consistency control based on the voltage observer only
needs to exchange one state variable, namely vavg i , between adjacent nodes, while the voltage optimization control
strategy proposed in this paper needs to exchange two state variables, ∆vU i and ∆εUi , but it can overcome the
influence of uncertain initial value and time delay on the steady-state value of the controller, and it has stronger
applicability in practical applications.

3. Simulation analysis
In order to test and verify the control effect and feasibility of the control strategy proposed in this paper under
different conditions, a DC microgrid system with four distributed units connected in parallel was established on the
MATLAB/Simulink platform. The system structure is shown in Fig. 1. The islanded DC microgrid consists of four
groups of PVs with a rated power of 3 kW, energy storage, and loads with different resistance values. For the ring
communication topology shown in Fig. 2, and the controller and system parameters are shown in Table 1.
To simplify the controller design process, all communication weights are set to 1, and the adjacency matrix is
obtained as
⎡ ⎤
0 1 0 1
⎢ ⎥
⎢1 0 1 0⎥
AN = ⎢ (37)
⎢ ⎥
⎥
⎢0 1 0 1⎥
⎣ ⎦
1 0 1 0

Table 1. Controller and system parameters.

Symbol Value Symbol Value
Power controller kPP 1 Droop gain RV1 0.05
Consensus algorithm bij 50 Droop gain RV2 0.1
Consensus algorithm cij 50 Droop gain RV13 0.15
Load resistance 0.576  Droop gain RV4 0.2
Bus capacitor 6 mF Switching frequency 20 kHz
Voltage coefficient 5 Weight coefficient 5

3.1. Load step change

Considering the load step change, observe the power response of the energy storage unit. At the initial moment,
the system is connected to 4 groups of loads of the same size on the DC bus. At 2 s, put load A near the access
point of the fourth group of energy storage units. The simulation results are shown in Fig. 5.
It can be seen from the figure that when the load changes, the bus voltage changes sharply, but due to the action
of the bus voltage loop in the controller, it quickly stabilizes near the reference value. Fig. 5(b) shows that even
though the voltage of each node is different due to the power flow inside the system, the output of the voltage
observer is uniformly converged and stabilized at 400 V. The power response curve in Fig. 5(a) shows that the
energy storage unit responds quickly at the moment of load change to realize power distribution.

3.2. Performance under communication faults

The simulation of this example verifies the effectiveness of the voltage optimization control under the commu-
nication line failure, and there is still a 0.1 s communication delay between each node. The initial topology of the
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Fig. 5. (a) Output power; (b) Bus voltage.

system is the ring topology shown in Fig. 2. This topology can minimize communication redundancy while ensuring
that any communication line failure will not cause the system to lose connectivity.
Under normal conditions, the system is connected to 4 groups of 20  loads, the fourth group of batteries will
be locked in 3 s, and the communication with other energy storage units will be disconnected at the same time.
The simulation results are shown in Fig. 6.

Fig. 6. (a) Bus voltage; (b) Battery output power.

It can be seen from Fig. 6(a) that when a communication line failure occurs in the system, the communication
topology is still connected, the unbalanced power generated in the system causes the DC bus voltage to fluctuate,
and the voltage returns to stability after a limited and small oscillation; It can also be seen in Fig. 6(b) that the
output power of the other three groups of batteries increases after the failure, and the output power of the fourth
group of batteries is reduced to zero after the failure, and the power is distributed according to the size of the
remaining capacity.
It can be seen from Fig. 7 that at 3 s, the fourth group of batteries fails, and the rate of decrease of the battery
SOC becomes larger. At this time, the SOC difference between different battery packs gradually decreases. It shows
that in the case of multiple line failures, the communication topology is divided into several parts, and the voltage
optimization can be achieved inside each part, which is also an acceptable operation mode. The simulation results
show that the proposed distributed control method can still work normally under the control when the communication
network is changed due to the failure of a single battery, and the power responds as expected. Therefore, the
communication topology and voltage optimization control strategy proposed in this paper have high operational
reliability.
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Fig. 7. SOC changes of 4 groups of batteries.

4. Conclusion
In order to solve the problem of voltage regulation and power distribution of multiple distributed units in islanded
DC microgrids, this paper proposes a distributed control strategy for power distribution and bus voltage regulation
based on multi-agent consensus algorithm, and the following conclusions are obtained: (1) The power controller
can make the SoC of each energy storage unit tend to be consistent, avoiding overcharge and overdischarge of
a single battery; when a fault occurs and the communication network changes, other energy storage units can
still work normally under control; (2) This paper The proposed voltage optimization control strategy based on the
consensus algorithm transforms the voltage control problem into the optimization problem of making the deviation
and minimum of each busbar deviating from the rated value. Compared with the control method based on the
voltage observer, the steady-state value of the optimal control is not affected by the delay and the initial value of
the controller, and the robustness is stronger; (3) The simulation results show that the proposed distributed control
method can It can effectively overcome the influence of the initial value of the controller, communication delay and
communication failure, and has good adaptability and scalability.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could
have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments
This work was partially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (62173082, U1908217),
the National Key R&D Program of China (2018YFB1700500), and the science and technology project “Key
Technologies and Application of Distributed Swarm Intelligent Collaborative Control and Optimization for Energy
Internet” (52100220002B) of State Grid Co., Ltd of China.

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