IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SUSTAINABLE ENERGY, VOL. 13, NO.

2, APRIL 2022 743

A Decentralized Impedance Reshaping Strategy for

Balanced, Unbalanced and Harmonic Power
Sharing in Islanded Resistive Microgrids
Fei Deng , Yang Li, Xiangke Li , Student Member, IEEE, Wenli Yao, Member, IEEE, Xiaobin Zhang ,
and Paolo Mattavelli , Fellow, IEEE

Abstract—In an islanded microgrid, the wire impedance mis- CDSC Cascaded delayed signal cancellation.
matches among distributed generation (DG) units lead to inaccu- LPF Low-pass filter.
rate power sharing results, which influences the system’s normal DRP Droop.
operation. The output impedances of DG units can be reshaped to
deal with this issue. In this paper, an impedance reshaping strategy CI Constant impedance.
for the resistive microgrid is proposed based on the combination of PR Proportion-resonant.
droop control and adaptive virtual impedance regulation (AVIR). Sj∗ Power rating of the j-th DG unit.
Firstly, DG units operate in droop mode and the steady-state mj The proportion the j-th DG unit shares.
reactive power from Q − f droop is restored as the reference.
Pj Active power from j-th DG unit.
Then the droop loops are removed and an AVIR based on the
error between instantaneous reactive power and its reference is Qj Reactive powers from j-th DG unit.
implemented. Since reactive power sharing with Q − f is relatively Ps,j Uniform active powers from j-th DG unit.
accurate, the impedance mismatches could be eliminated by the Qs,j Uniform reactive powers from j-th DG unit.
virtual impedances introduced with the proposed strategy, all the VC,j Output voltage magnitude in j-th DG unit.
accurate active, reactive, unbalanced and harmonic power sharing
δC,j Power angle in j-th DG unit.
could be realized simultaneously. In this strategy, communication
among DG units or between DG unit and central control is not Rw,j Wire impedance in j-th DG unit.
required, neither the wire impedances nor bus voltage or load Rv,j Virtual impedance in j-th DG unit.
current is measured, which reveals the high system reliability. Eb Bus voltage magnitude.
Finally, the simulation and experimental results are presented to V∗ Rated voltage magnitude.
verify the effectiveness of the proposed control method.
Vj Reference voltage magnitude.
Index Terms—Islanded resistive microgrid, distributed ω∗ Rated angle frequency.
generation, power sharing, unbalanced and harmonic power, ωj Angle frequency reference.
droop control, adaptive virtual impedance. kp /kq Droop coefficients.
io,b,j Balanced output current component in j-th DG unit.
NOMENCLATURE ωc,p Cut-off frequency of LPF for power calculation.
DER Distributed energy resource. ωc,td Cut-off frequency of LPF for transient detection.
DG Distributed generation. Q∗s,0,j Uniform reactive power reference.
MGCC Microgrid central controller. Q∗s,j Corrected uniform eactive power reference.
∗
VIR Virtual impedances regulation. V0,j Voltage reference magnitude stored in droop mode.
AVIR Adaptive virtual impedances regulation. kc,j Correction factor in j-th DG unit.
Gr (s) Regulator for AVIR.
Manuscript received June 20, 2021; revised September 28, 2021; accepted ki,r Integral coefficient for AVIR.
November 8, 2021. Date of publication November 26, 2021; date of current eQ,s,j Relative uniform reactive power error in j-th DG unit.
version March 22, 2022. This work was supported in part by the National Natural
Science Foundation of China under Grant 52007154 and in part by the Central
University Basic Research Fund of China under Grant G2020KY05107. Paper I. INTRODUCTION
no. TSTE-00633-2021. (Corresponding author: Fei Deng.)
Fei Deng, Yang Li, Wenli Yao, and Xiaobin Zhang are with the ISTRIBUTED energy resources (DERs) have been more
School of Automation, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710072,
China (e-mail: dengfei@mail.nwpu.edu.cn; li_yang_nwpu@mail.nwpu.edu.cn;
yaowl@nwpu.edu.cn; dgl907@126.com).
D and more popular for the environmental problem and the
concept microgrid is proposed to integrate various DERs [1],
Xiangke Li is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, [2]. In the normal case, the microgrid is connected with the
HongKong Polytechnic University, HongKong 999077, China (e-mail:
lixiangke@mail.nwpu.edu.cn). utility, when disconnecting from the utility it operates in islanded
Paolo Mattavelli is with the Department of Management, Engineering, mode. For the normal operation of the islanded microgrid shown
University of Padova, 36100 Vicenza, Italy (e-mail: paolo.mattavelli@unipd.it). in Fig. 1, power sharing is an essential issue [3]. Besides,
Color versions of one or more figures in this article are available at
https://doi.org/10.1109/TSTE.2021.3130983. when the unbalanced and nonlinear loads are supplied, not only
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TSTE.2021.3130983 the balanced powers (active and reactive powers) but also the
1949-3029 © 2021 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See https://www.ieee.org/publications/rights/index.html for more information.

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744
Fig. 1. A typical islanded microgrid.
unbalanced and harmonic powers should be shared accurately
among all distributed generation (DG) units. To this end, a great
number of strategies are proposed and impedance reshaping is
an effective technique [4], [5].
The first group is communication-based methods, in which
communication among DG units or between DG units and
microgrid central controller (MGCC) is required. In [6]–[8], the
virtual impedances are regulated according to active or reactive
power error and only the balanced power sharing is considered.
In [9], [10], the balanced, unbalanced and harmonic virtual
impedance regulation (VIR) are based on active (or reactive),
unbalanced and harmonic power errors respectively. In [11], the
virtual impedances are regulated according to harmonic power
error. The VIR in [12] is based on current errors. The reference
values in [6]–[12] are generated with periodic communication
among DG units or between DG unit and MGCC. A distributed
event-triggered control is adopted in [13] to adaptively regulate
the virtual impedances at both fundamental positive/negative
sequence and harmonic frequencies, with which the communi-
cation burden is reduced. In [14], [15], the power-impedance
droops are established to reduce impedance mismatches based
on communication among DG units, the wire impedance values
are required in [14] and the bus voltage and load current are mea-
sured in [15]. In [16], the virtual impedance is regulated based on
the combination of Q − V droop and adaptive virtual impedance
regulation in a successive way, with which the balanced power
sharing is improved. However, in this method, MGCC is required
to send command to each DG unit and the robustness against
interruptions during the VIR process is poor. A fixed virtual
impedance is introduced in [17] to improve harmonic current
sharing performance and the voltage distortion is reduced with
a harmonic voltage emulation, the communication is used to
exchange two command bits among inverters. In [18], the virtual
impedance is regulated based on the droop equivalent impedance
concept which has the same influence on power sharing with
droop loops.
Besides, the impedance also could be reshaped independent
of communication. In [19], an output current feedforward and
feedback are introduced to reshape the output impedance at
fundamental and harmonic frequencies respectively, but the
voltage regulation is open-loop, the output voltage quality is
degraded. A strategy with a harmonic output current feedfor-
ward and a droop technique is proposed in [20] to adjust the
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SUSTAINABLE ENERGY, VOL. 13, NO. 2, APRIL 2022
harmonic output impedance, the harmonic current sharing is
improved but this method is sensitive to inverter parameters.
The virtual impedance varies as a linear function of the output
current and unbalanced output current of the DG units in [21],
[22] respectively, the power sharing performance is improved
but the sharing error still exists. An optimal voltage regulator
is proposed in [23], with which the output impedance could
be reshaped, but the real-time grid impedance measurement
is required. In [24], [25], power-impedance droops without
communication are proposed to reduce impedance mismatch,
the introduced virtual impedances are negative, which threatens
system stability.
Among the above-mentioned impedance reshaping strategies:
1) the system reliability is degraded by communication [6]–[11],
[13]–[18], [26], 2) the measurement of wire impedance, bus
voltage or load current is impractical in a distributed system [14],
[15], [23], 3) the voltage regulation and power sharing can not be
achieved simultaneously [19], [21], [22], 4) the system stability
is challenged with the negative virtual impedances [24], [25]. To
solve these issues, a decentralized impedance reshaping strategy
for low-voltage islanded microgrid where the wire impedances
are resistive [9], [27], is proposed in this paper. In this method,
DG units operate in droop mode firstly, the steady-state reactive
power is stored as the reference value. Then the droop loops are
removed and the virtual impedance is generated with regulating
instantaneous reactive power to follow the stored reference
value. When the desired power sharing accuracy is obtained, the
regulation process will be disabled. Compared with the existing
power sharing strategies, the proposed strategy has the following
advantages: 1) The proposed impedance reshaping strategy is in-
dependent of communication and extra measurements, only the
local current and voltage information is required, which reveals
the high reliability; 2) The introduced virtual resistance can be
extended to all frequency range, all the balanced, unbalanced
and harmonic powers are distributed accurately; 3) The virtual
impedance introduced is relatively small, its influence on output
voltage is limited, the good voltage quality maintains.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. In Section II,
the basic principle of AVIR is discussed. The development of
the proposed strategy and the impedance reshaping process is
presented in Section III. The performance analysis and param-
eter selection method are explained in Section IV. To verify
the effectiveness of the proposed strategy, the simulation and
experimental results are presented in Section V and Section VI
respectively. Finally, the conclusions are given in Section VII.
II. BASIC PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTIVE VIRTUAL IMPEDANCE
REGULATION
Without loss of generality, it is assumed that the ratio of power
ratings of DG units is
S1∗ : S2∗ : · · · : Sn∗ = m1 : m2 : · · · : mn (1)
where n is the number of DG units, mj represents the proportion
j-th DG unit shares.
DENG et al.: DECENTRALIZED IMPEDANCE RESHAPING STRATEGY FOR BALANCED, UNBALANCED AND HARMONIC POWER SHARING 745

In resistive microgrids, the output active and reactive power
in DG #j are expressed as [28]
VC,j (VC,j − Eb )
Pj =
Rw,j
VC,j Eb
Qj = − · δC,j
Rw,j
where VC,j , δC,j and Rw,j are output voltage magnitude, power
angle and wire resistance in DG #j respectively, Eb is bus
voltage magnitude.
In (2) and (3), since the output voltage magnitude almost
is constant, the active power mainly is influenced by wire
impedance and its voltage drop, the reactive power is determined
with power angle and wire impedance. Therefore, to improve
power sharing accuracy, two strategies are available: 1) adjusting
active and reactive power with wire impedance voltage drop
compensation and power angle regulation respectively; 2) mod-
ifying active and reactive power with wire impedance mismatch
elimination.
The first strategy can be achieved with P − V and Q − f
droop control as
idea, an decentralized impedance reshaping strategy is proposed
in this paper.
(2) III. PROPOSED CONTROL STRATEGY
In this section, the proposed impedance reshaping strategy is
illustrated by an example of a resistive microgrid with two par-
(3)
allel DG units. Firstly, transient detection is adopted to activate
the proposed strategy, with which the communication among DG
units is unnecessary. Then DG units operate in droop mode to
generate uniform reactive power reference. After that, the droop
loops are removed and the AVIR is implemented. Herein, a flag
F m is introduced to indicate the operation mode of DG units.
A DG unit with the proposed strategy is presented in Fig. 2.
A. Power Calculation
In this paper, the output voltage is replaced with voltage
reference, with which the active and reactive power in (2) and
(3) are modified as
Vj (Vj − Eb )
Pj = (7)
Re,j

Vj = V ∗ − kp ·Ps,j (4) V j Eb
Qj = − · δj (8)
∗
Re,j
ωj = ω + kq ·Qs,j (5)
where Vj and δj are reference voltage magnitude before virtual
where V∗ and Vj are rated and reference voltage magnitudes impedance and corresponding power angle respectively, Re,j is
respectively, ω ∗ and ωj are rated and reference angular frequen- equivalent impedance, it is sum of Rv,j and Rw,j .
cies respectively, kp and kq are the droop coefficients, they are In (7) and (8), the virtual impedance is a part of the equivalent
same in each DG units. Ps,j and Qs,j are uniform active and impedance, with which after the impedance reshaping process
reactive powers respectively, they are defined as Ps,j = Pj /mj completes, all DG units can be regarded as same with each other.
and Qs,j = Qj /mj respectively. Afterwards, the power sharing performance during transient
In this strategy, communication is unnecessary, accurate re- could be improved.
active power sharing could be achieved but the active power To calculating the active and reactive powers, the balanced
sharing still is inaccurate. Besides, an unexpected voltage drop component in output current (io,b,j ) is extracted with the cas-
and frequency deviation are introduced. caded delayed signal cancellation (CDSC)-based decomposition
For the second strategy, adaptive virtual impedance regulation method in [29]. In the stationary reference frame, the uniform
(AVIR) is widely adopted. The virtual resistance is regulated average active and reactive powers are calculated as
according to the power error or current error as
ωc,p vj,α · io,b,j,α + vj,β · io,b,j,β
Rv,j = Gr (s) (Xj − Xref ) (6) Ps,j = · (9)
s + ωc,p mj
where X could be active power, reactive power, harmonic power ωc,p vj,β · io,b,j,α − vj,α · io,b,j,β
or current magnitude, Gr (s) is the regulator for AVIR, it can be Qs,j = · (10)
s + ωc,p mj
an integrator or a proportional-integral (PI) regulator.
With this method, accurate power sharing could be achieved, where ωc,p is the cut-off frequency of the low-pass filters
but the reference generation is based on communication among (LPFs), vj,αβ and io,b,j,αβ are voltage reference before virtual
DG units or between DG unit and MGCC, which degrades impedance and balanced output current in stationary reference
system reliability. frame respectively.
Since the reactive power sharing is accurate in droop control
and it also can be achieved with AVIR, the two above-mentioned B. Transient Detection
strategies can be combined: implement droop control firstly to
After a load demand change or a network structure change,
generate the reactive power reference, then remove the droop
the active power varies rapidly in response to the change and
control and introduce regulate reactive power to follow the
its derivative could be used for transient detection [30]. This
obtained reference for AVIR. With this process, all the balanced,
variable is expressed as
unbalanced and harmonic powers can be distributed accurately,  
the voltage drop will be reduced and the frequency deviation ωc,td  dPs,j 
GP,j = (11)
can be eliminated, communication is not required. Based on this s + ωc,td  dt 

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746 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SUSTAINABLE ENERGY, VOL. 13, NO. 2, APRIL 2022

Fig. 2. A DG unit with the proposed strategy.

where ωc,td is the cut-off frequency of the LPF. reactive power error. It should be noted that, the disablement of
If GP,j becomes larger than a predefined threshold ξth , the droop loops eliminates voltage magnitude drop and frequency
transient flag F tr will be set. When the droop mode is finished, deviation, which changes the operation point of DG units, the
F tr would be reset. reference Q∗s,0,j can not be used directly. Therefore, a correction
factor kc,j is introduced, the uniform reactive power reference
is corrected as
C. Proposed Decentralized Impedance Reshaping Strategy
Q∗s,j = kc,j · Q∗s,0,j . (12)
After transient detection, the proposed impedance reshaping
strategy is activated. Firstly, the reference of uniform reactive Therefore, the virtual resistance is regulated as
power is generated with droop control. Then the droop loops are  
replaced with AVIR to eliminate wire impedance mismatches. Gr (s) Qs,j − Q∗s,j
Rv,j = (13)
When the desired power sharing accuracy is obtained, the mj
DG units operate with constant virtual impedance. Without
where Gr (s) = ki,r /s is regulator for AVIR, ki,r is integral
loss of Generality, it is assumed that m1 Rw,1 < m2 Rw,2 , the
coefficient.
impedance reshaping process in the proposed strategy is dis-
Without communication among DG units, the active or reac-
played in Fig. 3.
tive power errors can not calculated directly. In this paper, the
1) Droop (DRP) Mode: After a transient is detected, the
local relative uniform reactive power error is defined as
value of F m is changed from 0 to 1, which enables DG units  
operate in DRP mode, the droop control in (4) and (5) are  Q − Q∗ 
 s,j s,j 
implemented for a time duration Tdrp . Tdrp should long enough eQ,s,j =  . (14)
 Q∗s,j 
to ensure DG units reach steady states. When DG units have
operated in this mode for Tdrp , F tr would be reset and its falling When eQ,s,j in (14) is smaller than a predefined threshold
edge detection disables droop control and changes F m from 1 εQ,s , F m will be changed to 0 and the AVIR algorithm would
to 2. The uniform reactive power value and voltage reference be disabled.
magnitude at the end of DRP mode are restored as the references 3) Constant Impedance (CI) Mode: Before the proposed
Q∗s,0,j and V0,j respectively. strategy is implemented or after the AVIR is finished, F m = 0,
2) AVIR Mode: When F m = 2, DG units are in this mode, DG units operate in this mode. In this mode, the voltage reference
the virtual impedance is regulated according to uniform magnitude and angle frequency are their rated value and virtual

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DENG et al.: DECENTRALIZED IMPEDANCE RESHAPING STRATEGY FOR BALANCED, UNBALANCED AND HARMONIC POWER SHARING 747

IV. PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS AND PARAMETER SELECTION

In this section, the mechanism of the proposed strategy for
dealing with the transient occurring during impedance reshaping
process is explained firstly. Then the system small-signal model
during DRP mode and AVIR mode is built respectively, based on
which the system stability is analysed, the controller parameters
are selected and the influence of virtual impedance on system
stability is discussed. Besides, the correction factor to modify
reactive power reference is determined. For simplicity, a case
that an islanded microgrid including two DG units with same
power ratings is considered in following discussion.

A. Mechanism to Handle Transient Occurring in Impedance

Reshaping Process
During the proposed impedance reshaping process, DG units
operate in droop mode and AVIR mode sequentially. Since the
uncertainty in microgrids, the load demand change or system
structure change might occur during this process, the normal
operation of DG units will be interrupted, which influences the
power sharing performance and even degrades system stability.
To avoid this problem, the changes during impedance reshaping
process is detected with the transient detection method in (11).
When the transient is detected, flag F tr will be set, and the
previous impedance reshaping process will pause.Then another
impedance reshaping process operates from the beginning, the
DG units operate in DRP mode and AVIR mode sequentially
Fig. 3. Virtual impedance regulation process with the proposed strategy. until the desired power sharing accuracy is obtained.

B. Stability Analysis
impedance keeps constant. This mode is ended only if another
transient signal is detected. During impedance reshaping process, the stability both in
DRP mode and AVIR mode should be guaranteed. Since the
D. Voltage Reference Compensation With Virtual Impedance bandwidth of inner loops is much greater than that of outer loops,
the dynamic response of inner loops is neglected.
When DG units operate in AVIR mode or CI mode, the voltage 1) Stability Analysis in DRP Mode: In this mode, the droop
reference for inner loops is compensated with virtual impedance, loops in (4) and (5) work, the small-signal model of power stage
it is expressed as can be induced from (7) and (8) as
vref,j,αβ = vj,αβ − io,j,αβ · Rv,j . (15)
ΔYj = Bj ΔXj (16)
It should be pointed out that, under unbalanced-load and
nonlinear-load condition, when DG units operate in DRP mode, where ΔXj = [ΔVj , Δδj ]T , ΔYj = [ΔPj , ΔQj ]T , Δx rep-
only the balanced power sharing is considered, unbalanced or resents the small-signal perturbation of variable x, and
harmonic power sharing issue is not involved. When DG units ⎡ ⎤
∂Pj ∂Pj
operate in AVIR and CI mode, the virtual resistance is intro- ⎢ ∂Vj ∂δj ⎥
duced, which is not relative to frequency, the voltage reference Bj = ⎢ ⎣ ∂Qj ∂Qj ⎦.
⎥
components at all frequencies contained in output current are
compensated. Therefore, all the balanced, unbalanced and har- ∂Vj ∂δj
monic power sharing performance are improved simultaneously. The small-signal model of the controller in (4) and (5) is
expressed as
E. Inner Loops
In the inner loops, a proportional regulator is adopted for ΔẊj = Cj ΔXj + Dj ΔYj (17)
inductor current regulation to enhance the system damping and where
a Proportional-resonant (PR) controller is designed for capac- ⎡ ⎤
itor voltage regulation to achieve steady-state zero error in the   −kp ωc,p 0
−ωc,p 0
stationary reference frame [31], [32], in this paper, the 5th and Cj = , Dj = ⎣ ωc,p ⎦.
0 0 0 kq
7th harmonics are considered. s + ωc,p

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748
Fig. 4. Eigenvalue loci of Aj when DG units operate in DRP mode with
increasing (a) kp (3×10−4 ∼ 7.5×10−3 ) and (b) kq (1×10−6 ∼ 3×10−5 ).
The system state-space model in DRP mode is
ΔẊj = Aj ΔXj
where Aj = Cj + Dj Bj .
The system dynamic and stability can be reflected by the
dominant eigenvalues of the matrix Aj . The eigenvalues loci
of Aj with various kp and kq are presented in Fig. 4. As shown
in Fig. 4(a), with increasing kp (3×10−4 ∼ 7.5×10−3 ), λ1,1
moves away from imaginary axis, λ1,2 and λ1,3 almost remain.
The increase of kq (1×10−6 ∼ 3×10−5 ) mainly influences λ1,2
and λ1,3 , as displayed in Fig. 4(b). Considering the bandwidth
of outer loop should be much smaller than that of inner loops
and the CDSC-based decomposition algorithm, in this paper,
select kp = 1.5 × 10−3 and kq = 6 × 10−6 respectively, with
which the dominant eigenvalue is λ1,3 = −2.447. Based on
control theory, the 1%-error settling time is |5/λ3 |. To ensure
DG units reach a steady state before transferring to AVIR mode,
the duration of DRP mode should be set as Tdrp > |5/λ1,3 |.
2) Stability Analysis in AVIR Mode: In this mode, the regu-
lator in (13) works, the small-signal model of power stage is
ΔQj = bj ΔRv,j
where bj = ∂Qj /∂Rv,j .
The small-signal model of controller is
ki,r ωc,p   is generated. Because the reactive power sharing is accurate
ΔRv,j = · · ΔQj − ΔQ∗j .
s s + ωc,p
Therefore, the closed-loop small-signal mode in AVIR mode
is
ΔQj = Gcl,j (s) · ΔQ∗j
where Gcl,j (s) is closed-loop transfer function and it is
− ki,r bj ωc,p
Gcl,j (s) = 2 . (22)
s + ωc,p s − ki,r bj ωc,p
In this mode, the eigenvalues of Gcl,j (s) is adopted to indicate
system stability and their loci with increasing ki,r (3×10−4 ∼
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SUSTAINABLE ENERGY, VOL. 13, NO. 2, APRIL 2022
Fig. 5. Eigenvalue loci of Gcl,j (s) when DG units operate in AVIR mode
with increasing ki,r (3×10−4 ∼ 2×10−2 ).
Fig. 6. Eigenvalue loci of Gcl,j (s) with increasing Re (0.05 ∼ 0.3).
(18) 2×10−2 ) is presented in Fig. 5. Firstly, two eigenvalues move
towards each other along real axis and then move away real axis
in opposite directions after they meet. In term of the system
stability and dynamic, select ki,r = 1.6 × 10−3 .
3) Influence of Virtual Impedance: When the impedance re-
shaping process completes, the wire impedance mismatch is
eliminated (Re,1 = Re,2 = Re ) and accurate power sharing is
achieved. With the proposed strategy, the virtual impedance is
introduced, its influence on system stability is analyzed based
on the change of the eigenvalues of Gcl,j (s) as Re increasing
(0.05 ∼ 0.3), the result is shown in Fig. 6, λ2,2 is dominating
pole. With increasing Re , λ2,2 moves towards to imaginary axis,
but still is in left-half plane, the system always is stable.
C. Determination of Correction Factor kc,j
In the microgrid, the total load demand reactive power can be
calculated as
Eb2
QL = sinθL (23)
(19) ZL
where ZL and θL are magnitude and phase angle of load
impedance respectively.
At the end of DRP mode, the reactive power reference Q∗s,0,j
(20)
between two DG units, Q∗s,0,j is the half of QL in (23). Besides,
since the voltage drop on wire impedance and virtual impedance
are much smaller that bus voltage, thus
2
V0,j
(21) Q∗s,0,j = sinθL . (24)
2ZL
During AVIR mode, the droop loops are removed, the voltage
reference is restored. According to (23), the desired reactive
power should be
(V ∗ )2
Q∗s,j = sinθL . (25)
2ZL
DENG et al.: DECENTRALIZED IMPEDANCE RESHAPING STRATEGY FOR BALANCED, UNBALANCED AND HARMONIC POWER SHARING 749

Fig. 7. Configuration of the microgrid prototype in simulation.

TABLE I
SYSTEM PARAMETERS

Substitute (24) and (25) into (12), the correction factor can be
obtained as Fig. 8. Simulation results: (a) Active and reactive powers, (b) output current
2 magnitudes, (c) bus voltage RMS, (d) frequency deviations and (e) virtual
V∗ impedances under balanced-load condition DG units with same capacities.
kc,j = . (26)
V0,j

V. SIMULATION RESULTS A. Balanced-Load Condition

To verify the effectiveness of the proposed impedance re-
shaping strategy, an islanded resistive microgrid prototype in
Fig. 7 is built in MATLAB/Simulink, where three three-phase
inverters are involved. The system parameters are listed in
Table I. The power sharing performances are tested under
balanced, unbalanced and nonlinear load conditions and are
presented as follows.
In this condition, the balanced load (Load 1) is supplied and
several cases are considered.
1) Comparison With Other Strategies: In this case, the ca-
pacities of three DG units are same (m1 = m2 = m3 = 1) and
the proposed impedance reshaping strategy is compared with
conventional inverse droop and the AVIR in [21], the simulation
results are displayed in Fig. 8 and Table II. For the proposed

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750 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SUSTAINABLE ENERGY, VOL. 13, NO. 2, APRIL 2022

TABLE II
COMPARISON OF STEADY-STATE PERFORMANCES AMONG DIFFERENT POWER SHARING STRATEGIES UNDER BALANCED-LOAD CONDITION

strategy, DG units operate in DRP mode after the transient

detection at the beginning, then after 2.5 s the inverse droop
is finished and DG units are in AVIR mode. When the desired
power sharing accuracy is obtained, the AVIR is disabled and
DG units operate in CI mode until the load demand is changed at
tc,1 = 7 s. Compared with the inverse droop, the AVIR strategy
in [21] improved the power sharing accuracy but the active
power error still is large, the bus voltage drop is enlarged and
the frequency deviation remains. With the proposed impedance
reshaping strategy, both the active and reactive powers are dis-
tributed equally among three DG units, the virtual impedances
introduced are quite small, which guarantees a relatively small
bus voltage magnitude drop. Besides, without droop loops,
the frequency deviation is eliminated in the proposed strategy.
During load change demand, the maximum reactive power errors
are 80.3 var and 3.9 var for the strategy in [21] and this paper
respectively, which reveals the excellent dynamic power sharing
capacity of the proposed strategy.
2) Load Demand Changes During Impedance Reshaping
Process: The cases where the load demand changes during the
impedance reshaping process are tested to show the robustness
of the proposed strategy and the simulation results are presented
in Fig. 9. When the load demand changes during DRP mode at
tc,21 = 1.0 s, after transient detection, another DRP mode with
duration Tdrp = 2.5 s is implemented and afterwards DG units
Fig. 9. Active and reactive powers with load demand change occurs (a) DRP
operate in AVIR mode to regulate the virtual impedance until the mode, (b) AVIR mode.
desire power sharing accuracy is achieved, the active and reactive
powers are presented in Fig. 9(a). If the load demand varies
in AVIR mode at tc,22 = 3.0 s, when the transient is detected,
the impedance reshaping process is interrupted and the virtual
impedances at tc,22 are kept, the DG units operate in DRP mode
again with smaller impedance mismatch. Then, after a duration
Tdrp = 2.5 s, the system reaches a steady state, DG units proceed
impedance reshaping process until the active power error satisfy
the predefined condition, as exhibited in Fig. 9(b).
3) DG Units With Different Capacities: The power sharing
performance when the capacities of DG units are different is
tested in this case, set m1 = m2 = 1, m3 = 1.5. As presented
in Fig. 10, when the impedance reshaping process is finished,
both the active and reactive powers sharing are in proportion
to the capacities of DG units (P1 = 892.8 W, P2 = 893.9 W,
P3 = 1320.2 W; Q1 = 498.6 var, Q2 = 484.5 var, Q3 = 719.1 Fig. 10. Active and reactive powers under balanced-load condition DG units
with different capacities.
var).

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DENG et al.: DECENTRALIZED IMPEDANCE RESHAPING STRATEGY FOR BALANCED, UNBALANCED AND HARMONIC POWER SHARING
Fig. 11. Simulation results under unbalanced-load condition. (a) Active and
reactive powers (b) balanced and unbalanced output current magnitudes.
TABLE III
COMPARISON UNDER UNBALANCED-LOAD CONDITION
B. Unbalanced-Load Condition
A single-phase load (Load 2) is supplied in this condition and
the simulation results with the strategy in [21] and in this paper
are shown in Fig. 11 and Table III. With the method in [21],
both the balanced and unbalanced power sharing performance
is improved but still is not accurate. Besides, it should be noted
that the unbalanced power sharing performance is inferior to
balanced power. In contrast, with the proposed strategy, both
the balanced and unbalanced powers are shared relatively accu-
rately. Also, the maximum reactive power error during transient
with the proposed strategy (3.5 var) much smaller than that with
the method in [21] (75.8 var), which puts up admirable transient
dynamic power sharing performance.
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751
Fig. 12. Simulation results under nonlinear-load condition. (a) Active and
reactive powers (b) balanced, -5th and +7th harmonic output current magnitudes.
TABLE IV
COMPARISON UNDER NONLINEAR-LOAD CONDITION
C. Nonlinear-Load Condition
In this condition, a nonlinear load (Load 3) is connected to
the microgrid. As the simulation results in Fig. 12 and Table IV
showing, comparing with the AVIR strategy in [21], all the
active, reactive and harmonic powers sharing are distributed rel-
atively accurately with the proposed strategy. Besides, during the
load change transient, the maximum reactive power errors with
the strategy in [21] and with the proposed strategy are 100.5 var
and 4.7 var respectively, which means that the power sharing
performance during transient also is improved significantly with
the proposed strategy.
752 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SUSTAINABLE ENERGY, VOL. 13, NO. 2, APRIL 2022

TABLE V
SYSTEM PARAMETERS OF EXPERIMENTAL SETUP

VI. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

The proposed strategy is verified on a microgrid proto-
type with two inverters, DSPs TMS320F28335 are applied
as digital controllers. The parameters of the experimental
setup are listed in Table V. In each condition, both unbal-
anced loads and nonlinear loads are supplied, all the bal-
anced, unbalanced and harmonic power sharing performances
are tested.

A. DG Units With Same Power Ratings

Fig. 13 and Table. VI present the experimental power sharing
results when two DG units have same power rating (m1 = Fig. 13. Experimental results for DG units with same power ratings.
m2 = 1). At the beginning, the errors between the active and (a) Active and reactive powers, (b) balanced and unbalanced output current
magnitude, (c) -5th and +7th harmonic output current magnitudes. P1 (P2 ):
reactive powers, all current components of two DG units are 152 W/div, Q1 (Q2 ):30 var/div, Io,b,1 (Io,b,2 , Io,ub,1 , Io,ub,2 ): 1.52 A/div,
quite apparent. After the proposed control strategy is activated, Io,−5,1 (Io,−5,2 , Io,+7,1 , Io,+7,2 ): 0.61 A/div, time: 2 s/div.
the DG units operate in DRP mode and AVIR mode in sequence.
When the proposed impedance reshaping process completes,
both the active and reactive powers are shared accurately, all the
balanced, unbalanced and harmonic output current components TABLE VI
in two DG units equal to each other. Besides, the accurate power EXPERIMENTAL POWER AND CURRENT SHARING RESULTS
sharing performance maintains during load change transient.

B. DG Units With Different Power Ratings

When the power ratings of two DG units are different (m1 =
1.5, m2 = 1), the experimental results are shown in Fig. 14 and
Table. VI. When DG units operate in CI mode without virtual
impedance, the power sharing performance is determined by
the wire impedance, the sharing errors are very large. When
the proposed strategy is enabled, with the proposed impedance
reshaping process, the wire impedance mismatch is eliminated,
both the active and reactive powers are distributed between
two DG units in proportion to their power ratings, and all the
balanced, unbalanced and harmonic components in load current
are shared proportionable in microgrid. During the load change
transient, the power sharing still is accurate.

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DENG et al.: DECENTRALIZED IMPEDANCE RESHAPING STRATEGY FOR BALANCED, UNBALANCED AND HARMONIC POWER SHARING
Fig. 14. Experimental results for DG units with different power ratings.
(a) Active and reactive powers, (b) balanced and unbalanced output current
magnitude, (c) -5th and +7th harmonic output current magnitudes. P1 (P2 ):
152 W/div, Q1 (Q2 ):30 var/div, Io,b,1 (Io,b,2 , Io,ub,1 , Io,ub,2 ): 1.52 A/div,
Io,−5,1 (Io,−5,2 , Io,+7,1 , Io,+7,2 ): 0.61 A/div, time: 2 s/div.
VII. CONCLUSION
In this paper, an enhanced power sharing strategy based on
the combination of inverse droop and AVIR is proposed for
islanded resistive microgrids. In this method, the steady-stage
performance of Q − f droop generates the reactive power ref-
erence and then the virtual impedance is regulated according to
the error between instantaneous reactive power and the obtained
reference in AVIR mode. As a consequence, the wire impedance
mismatches are eliminated and all the balanced, unbalanced and
harmonic powers are distributed accurately among DG units
both in the steady state and during load change transient. The
feasibility of the proposed impedance reshaping strategy is ver-
ified by the simulation and experimental results under different
load conditions.
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Fei Deng received the B.E. degree in electrical engi-
neering and automation in 2015 from the Northwest-
ern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, China, where
he is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree in
electrical engineering with the School of Automation.
From 2018 to 2020, he was a Visiting Student with
the University of Padova, Vicenza, Italy.
His research interests include analysis, modeling
and control of power converters, power sharing in AC
islanded microgrid.
Yang Li received the B.S. degree in electrical engi-
neering from Northwestern Polytechnical University
(NWPU), Xi’an, China, in 2015. He is currently work-
ing toward the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering
with NWPU.
His research interests include the virtual syn-
chronous generator control of grid-tied and islanded
inverters for microgrid and the nonlinear control ap-
plication.
Xiangke Li (Student Member, IEEE) received the
B.Eng. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering
from Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an,
China, in 2016 and 2021, respectively. From 2018 to
2020, he was a Visiting Student with the Nanyang
Technological University, Singapore. He is currently
working with the Department of Electrical Engineer-
ing, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University as a Re-
search Associate.
His research interests include modeling and control
of DC-DC converters, distributed generations and
microgrids.
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SUSTAINABLE ENERGY, VOL. 13, NO. 2, APRIL 2022
Wenli Yao (Member, IEEE) received the B.S., M.S.,
and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from
Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, China,
in 2009, 2012, and 2017, respectively. From 2013
to 2015, he was a Visiting Scholar with Aalborg
University, Aalborg, Denmark. From 2017 to 2019, he
was a Research Fellow with the Rolls-Royce@NTU
Corporate Lab, School of Electrical and Electronics
Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Sin-
gapore. Since May 2019, he has been with Northwest-
ern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, China, as an As-
sociate Professor. His research interests include current control, grid-connected
inverter, multipulse converter, and power decoupling.
Xiaobin Zhang received the B.S. and M.S. degrees
in electrical engineering from the School of Automa-
tion, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an,
China, in 1983 and 1986, respectively. Since 1986, he
has been with the School of Automation, Northwest-
ern Polytechnical University, where he is currently a
Professor.
His research interests include power electronic
control, aircraft power system, multi-pulse converter,
and power decoupling.
Paolo Mattavelli (Fellow, IEEE) received the M.S.
degree (hons.) and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engi-
neering from the University of Padova, Padova, Italy,
in 1992 and 1995, respectively. From 1995 to 2001,
he was a Researcher with the University of Padova,
Padova, Italy. From 2001 to 2005 he was an Associate
Professor with the University of Udine, Udine, Italy,
where he led the Power Electronics Laboratory. In
2005 he joined the University of Padova in Vicenza
with the same duties. From 2010 to 2012 he was with
the Center for Power Electronics Systems (CPES),
Virginia Tech. He is currently a Professor with the University of Padova.
His field of interest includes analysis, modeling, analog and digital control
of power converters, grid-connected converters for renewable energy systems
and micro-grids, high-temperature and high-power density power electronics.
In these research fields, he has been Leading several industrial and government
projects. His current google scholar h-index is 80.
From 2003 to 2012 he was an Associate Editor for IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON
POWER ELECTRONICS. From 2005 to 2010 he was the IPCC (Industrial Power
Converter Committee) Technical Review Chair for the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON
INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS. For terms 2003–2006, 2006–2009 and 2013–2015, he
has been a Member-at-Large of the IEEE Power Electronics Society’s Adminis-
trative Committee. He also was the recipient of the 2005, 2006, 2011 and 2012
the prize paper awards in the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS and
in 2007, the 2nd Prize Paper Award at the IEEE Industry Application Annual
Meeting. He is a Co-Editor in Chief of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER
ELECTRONICS.