2020 IEEE International Conference for Innovation in Technology (INOCON)
Bengaluru, India. Nov 6-8, 2020
Stability Analysis of Supercapacitor based DC
Microgrid System with Energy Storage
Sangita B. Patil
Department of Electrical Engineering
G.H. Raisoni Institute of Engineering and Technology
Wagholi, Pune, India.
sangita.patil@raisoni.net
Abstract- In this paper explained off-grid supercapacitor-
based Photovoltaic system with energy storage. The proposed
system will operate in all possible conditions. In a conventional
system supercapacitor govern at only high voltage. DC
microgrid supercapacitor starts to self-discharge up to lower
values. This nature of supercapacitor is making DC microgrid
unstable at low values of supercapacitor voltages. So, in this
study change in supercapacitor voltage and stability of DCMG
is calculated, with adequate supercapacitor voltage. A new
method of design is used to confirm DC Microgrid stability in
all operations conditions. The firmness of the DC micro-grid
with DC voltage controller for the DC link is analyzed and
assessed by MATLAB Simulink platform and test results.
Keywords— DC microgrid, HES (Hybrid Energy Storage)
system, stability analysis, voltage and current controller.
I. INTRODUCTION
A microgrid is the integration of two or more energy
resources. But we need constant power with clean and
pollution-free generation. There are two types of microgrid
that are popular now. First is standalone microgrid and grid-
connected microgrid [1]. Renewable energy generation is
having variable output. To overcome this problem microgrid
is implemented with hybrid energy storage which contains
battery and supercapacitor. Hybrid energy storage system
topology and its benefits are described in detail. Similarly,
Control of speed energy transition on battery storage is
possible using ramp rate limitation to control the hybrid
energy storage [2]. A new Control strategy is explained in
[3], to avoid variation in output power with battery and the
supercapacitor with islanded mode. Microgrid operates
under voltage control mode continuously to maintain dc-link
voltage constant. Power dissemination is observed in
supercapacitor connection and a new virtual capacitor control
strategy is invented for supercapacitor [4]. If four s/w tri-
state converter is connected to droop controlled microgrid
then supercapacitor can respond with rapid changing current
for regulation of dc link. Speed is 4.5 times greater than
traditional converter [5]. SCALDO technique is used in all
Similarly, reduced s/w variations are required for high
current. A low dropout regulator is used to assist variation in
supercapacitor to avoid noise and transient. SCALDO is an
idiomatic DC-DC converter developed by team at Waikato
university [6][7][8]. Hybrid energy storage can be
implemented with new virtual impedance concept to
eliminate ripple power by high order filter and it help to
increase battery life with less stress [9]. Commercial off the
shelf supercapacitor charges provide the design &
implementation of supercapacitor-based energy storage.
Two branch RC circuit model is used to attribute charge
redistribution process [10]. Supercapacitor is having high
978-1-7281-9744-9/20/$31.00 ©2020 IEEE
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Ashwini S. Pawar
Department of Electrical Engineering
G.H. Raisoni Institute of Engineering and Technology
Wagholi, Pune,India.
ashu.pawar1993@gmail.com
power density, so supercapacitor is used to compensate
variable power to improve power quality, energy
management and the life of DC microgrid. New control
method for smooth operation between grid and bi-directional
converter with supercapacitor energy storage [11]. Similarly
various strategies of power monitoring and administration
methods are explained in [12][13] for DC microgrid.
Supercapacitor is playing the role of a key element in
literature but only at rated voltage. Now, Supercapacitor is
an integral part of energy storage to satisfice transient load
demand and saves battery life. But the stability of micro-grid
is also important in smooth supply of energy but nature of
renewable energy sources, variable load and type of energy
storage affects stability of microgrid as well as stability of
grid varies at low voltage of supercapacitor.[14][15].
Some objectives of the proposed system given below:
1. Performance Calculation of DC microgrid
2. Microgrid feedback analysis at supercapacitor
voltages.
3. Estimation of desired values for stable microgrid
operation
4. Formation of DC-link Controller with sufficient gain
and phase margin.
II. ARCHITECTURE OF MICROGRID
Infrastructure and flow chart of DC microgrid to
implement the proposed design method shown in Fig. 1(a)
and (b) respectively, is derived from [16]. Basically, off-grid
DC microgrid is working in four different conditions. In all
mode, microgrid has constant voltage at bus because of
controller. These four modes are given below:
1. Active Battery Mode (ABM): In Active battery
mode, battery supplies load requirement.
2. Off Load Mode (OLM): In offload mode PV is not
having enough energy to satisfied load and battery
voltage is below lower limit so the load is
disconnected from dc link.
3. Battery Storage Mode (BSM): In battery storage
mode, PV supplies power to load also battery start
charging.
4. Off Storage Mode (EPM): In off storage mode,
battery and PV system having more energy than
required by load, so PV stops working in MPPT
mode.
1
 In the Proposed method DC microgrid is focused at
below 10 % of rated supercapacitor voltages for assessment
of stability.
regulators called P + R (Resonant) is invented for three phase
PWM inverter control. Converters are used for interaction
between grid and energy storage in Microgrid to control
current, voltage , and synchronize with the grid [17] and
parameters of system like voltage and current [16].

TABLE I. SYSTEM PARAMETERS

Parameter Value

Battery Specification 26 Ah & 108 V

Scap capacitance & rated voltage 8.28 F & 112 V

PV system: V_mpp & I_mpp at 1000 W/m2 120 V & 6.8 A

Battery, S_cap, System inductance: Lb, Lsc, Lpv 5 mH, 5 mH, 5mH

DC voltage, Load power: V_dc &P_load 210 V & 630 W

Frequency 20 kHz

Gain: Hb, Hsc & Hv 1

The proposed system is operating on system stability in

all possible conditions but specially concentrate on lower
(a) voltages of supercapacitor because in all classic methods of
designs system is get unstable at low voltages like 12V, 16V
shown in fig. 2.

(b)
Fig. 1. (a) Infrastucture of DC Microgrid (b) Flow Chart
III. PROPOSED WORK
Regulation of current in grid-connected converter is
possible by PI controller but PI controller has a bandwidth
issue, so it is not able to eliminate low current harmonics. To
overcome these difficulties high proportional gain is required
but it’s also in increase stability problems. The PI controller
has some following drawbacks:
1. Compensation of switching ripples with LCL filter is
complex.
2. Transformation of a refence frame with voltage feed-
forward and dq control is difficult.
3. Need distinct control for superior conduction.
To overcome all issues of PI controller, New second-
order generalised integrator is originating with high gain at
particular frequency called resonant frequency. The concept
of GI is carrying out with active filter & closed-loop
harmonics control. A new perspective of stationary frame
Fig. 2. Frequency response of system at different supercapacitor voltges
Bandwidth DC bus voltage.
A. Basic Principle of PR controller.
In traditional method of design PI controller is used to
control current for AC and DC converter. But nowadays PI
controller is replaced by PR controller because of is features
like zero steady state error, infinite gain. New PR control
will address two main disadvantages of PI controller relative
to traditional PI control, inability to detect zero steady state
error with a sinusoidal reference and low capacity for
disruption rejection. The PR controller is having advantages
like high efficiency in tracking of sinusoidal references and
rejection of disturbance due to an infinite gain at the simple
frequency.[18]
ଶ௄೔ ୱ (1)
Gs(s)=Kp +
௦ మ ାனబ మ
Gs(s)=Kp +
ଶ௄೔ ୱன೎ೠ೟ (2)
௦ మ ାଶன೎ೠ೟ మ ௦ାఠబ మ

2
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 Where, Kp & Ki is proportional and integral gain
respectively, ߱଴  is grid frequency and ߱௖௨௧ is cut-off
frequency.
B. MPPT controller with Incremental Conductance
Incremental conductance is one of the methods of
maximum power point tracking. P and O method has some
drawback but incremental conductance is easy to implement
which compare terminal voltage with MPP voltage.
Incremental conductance is having higher efficiency with
rapid tracking speed. The basic Principle of tracking is based
on differentiation of PV power w.r.t voltage and equalise
with zero as shown in equations 3 and 4. Fig. 4. PV output voltage

Fig.4 is showing output DC voltage of PV system in that

ௗ௉ ௗሺ௏ூሻ
= ൌ ‫ ܫ‬൅ ܸ
ௗூ
ൌ Ͳܽ‫݌݌݉ݐ‬ (3) 0s to 0.05s is very less settling time taken by system. The
ௗ௏ ௗ௏ ௗ௏
results shown in fig. 5 are (a) AC voltage (VL), (b) AC
‫ܫ‬ ݀‫ܫ‬ (4) current (IL) of load, & (c) current of battery (IB)
െ ൌ respectively. Battery storage system is having Soc limit and
ܸ ܸ݀
battery always works in between Soc limit. Proposed system
upper and lower limit of soc is 0.8 – 0.2. respectively.
This equation (4) is indicating the position of operating
point. The left side of the equation is instantaneous
conductance and right side is incremental conductance.
Value of equation (4) indicates the status of operating point
w. r. t MPP.
The proposed design method is implemented to achieve
stability of microgrid at a low voltage of supercapacitor
voltage with high phase and gain margin.
IV. RESULTS
The Simulation of proposed system shown in fig 3 is
created using the MATLAB/Simulink tool. In this simulation
model, PV system is connected parallelly with the battery (a)
and supercapacitor. This model has the plug and play feature
which works on the level of Soc. The higher and lower limit
for Soc for battery and supercapacitor is 0.8 & 0.35
respectively.

(b)

Fig. 3. Matlab simulink model

(c)
Fig. 5. (a) AC VL and (b) AC IL (c) IB

3
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 The following fig. 6 is showing power of system versus
time. The results showing in fig 6 is varies between load
requirement and PV generation.
Fig. 6. Load and System Power
V. CONCLUSION
This Paper proposes the PR controller with MPPT
Controller to maintain constant DC link voltage & stability
of the microgrid at low supercapacitor voltage. This method
also ensures that, microgrid will work in all possible mode.
DC microgrid can provide good efficiency, constant power,
stable operation with the proposed method. Incremental
Conductance is implemented in MPPT to boost output
power. Test results satisfice the objectives.
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