The 2010 International Power Electronics Conference

Composite Energy Storage System Using Dynamic

Energy Management in Microgrid Applications
Haihua Zhou1 , Tanmoy Bhattacharya2 and Ashwin M. Khambadkone3 , Senior Member, IEEE
email: 1 g0500090@nus.edu.sg, 2 eletb@nus.edu.sg and 3 eleamk@nus.edu.sg
4 Engineering Drive 3, ECE, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117576

I. ABSTRACT
Renewable energy based micro grids are a better way of
utilizing renewable power and reduce the usage of fossil
fuels. Usage of energy storage becomes mandatory, when such
micro-grids are used to supply quality power to the loads.
However, it is difficult to meet the various needs from both
the source and the load. The intermittent nature of renewable
energy sources like PV demands usage of storage with high
energy density. At the same time, quick fluctuation of load
demands storage with high power density. This paper proposes Fig. 2. Typical load profile
a Composite Energy Storage System (CESS) which contains
both high energy density and high power density storages to
meet the above mentioned requirements. The proposed power CESS
converter configuration and the energy management scheme
can actively share the power flow among the different energy Battery UltraCAP
storages. Results are presented to show the feasibility of the is1 is2
proposed scheme. DC-DC DC-DC
converter converter
II. I NTRODUCTION I II

DC bus
VDC
iL

DC-DC DC-DC DC-AC

converter converter converter
ipv

PV DC load AC load

Fig. 3. Block diagram showing CESS interface with the DC grid

Fig. 1. Typical PV power output profile

for households is depicted in Fig. 2. The PV output power
from a utility scale and load profile can also be found in
Due to the intermittent nature of renewable energy sources
Ref. [1] and Ref. [2] respectively. Here the PV power output
and the continuous variations of the load, storage (e.g. battery,
profile and the load profile shows low frequency as well as
ultracapacitor, flywheel etc.) is usually needed in a renew-
high frequency fluctuations which are mutually independent
able powered microgrid. A bi-directional DC-DC converter
in nature. To buffer out the low frequency oscillations and
is used to interface the energy storage with the DC bus.
to compensate for the intermittency of the renewable energy
The renewable output power profile and the load profile are
sources, energy storage with high energy density is required.
two important factors in deciding the bi-directional DC-DC
To provide high frequency component of power and also to
converter configuration and the capacity of the energy storage
supply or absorb the high power transients, energy storage with
components. The variation in output power from photovoltaic
high power density is required. But, both high energy density
system is shown in Fig. 1. Whereas, the typical load profile
and high power density capabilities are not available in a single
The work was financially supported by A∗ STAR MODERN project Fund storage. Hence, a Composite Energy Storage System (CESS)
R − 263 − 000 − 507 − 305. comprising of both high power density and high energy density

978-1-4244-5393-1/10/$26.00 ©2010 IEEE 1163


storage units is proposed in this paper. Battery and ultracapac-
itor are considered as high energy density storage and high
power density storage respectively. The block diagram of the
proposed CESS system is shown in Fig. 3.
Bi-directional DC-DC converters are required to interface
the battery and the ultracapacitor to the DC link for controlling
the power flow. To achieve high power and high flexibility,
modular design is the best approach [3], [4], [5]. Phase shift
controlled Dual Active Bridge (DAB) converter [6], [7],
[8] is a promising configuration for modular power converter
synthesis. It is able to transfer power bi-directionally just by
adjusting the phase shift between the primary and secondary
side bridges. The isolation between energy storage and load
is fulfilled by high frequency transformer. As soft switching
of DAB is possible, high switching frequency operation can
be achieved even at high power levels and hence the size of
filter capacitors and isolation transformers can be drastically
reduced. Therefore, DAB is selected as basic module in the
proposed scheme.
Hence, this paper proposes a composite energy storage sys-
tem using modular interleaved bi-directional DAB converter to
satisfy the different needs in the microgrid. A sample power
converter configuration scheme for interfacing batteries and
ultracapacitor to the DC link is proposed. In order to regulate
the output voltage and to achieve flexible power distribution
among modules, a cascaded control loop comprising of in-
ternal current control loop and outer voltage control loop
is incorporated. The salient features of the proposed CESS
system are: (1) Dynamic allocation of steady power demands
and transient power demands to the batteries and ultracapacitor
respectively (2) Flexible distribution of power flow among
different batteries without disturbing the normal operation
(3) Ultracapacitor charging-discharging without disturbing the
normal operation. Incorporation of these features has been pos-
sible because of the proposed unique modular power converter
structure.
III. A FAMILY OF MODULAR CONVERTERS
DAB DAB DAB
DAB DAB DAB
(a) (b) (c)
DAB DAB
DAB DAB
(d) (e)
Fig. 4. A few possible configurations of module based converter (a) IPOP (b)
IPOS (c) ISOS (d) Modified version of IPOP (e) Modified version of IPOS
As mentioned earlier, modular design is the best approach
to satisfy all the requirements of energy storage and load.
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The 2010 International Power Electronics Conference
iin io
S1 S3 S5 S7
iA iB
Vin VA 1 n VB Vo
S2 S4 T S6 S8
Fig. 5. Power converter structure of a single DAB unit
The configurations of modular converter are shown in Fig. 4.
Fig. 4 (a) to Fig. 4 (c) are demonstrated as possible configura-
tions for interfacing single energy storage while Fig. 4 (d) and
Fig. 4 (e) are derived for connecting multiple energy storages.
Input Parallel Output Parallel (IPOP) configuration as shown
in Fig. 4 (a) shares the input and output current in modules.
Therefore, it is suitable for applications where currents are
relatively high both in input and output. By controlling the
input current in each of the converter, the power flow in each
can be controlled [9]. Fig. 4 (d) is derived from Fig. 4 (a)
to interface multiple sources. Similar to IPOP, by controlling
input current of individual converter, power flow control in
energy storages is achieved. This is also a common topology
in connecting multiple sources [10].
Input Parallel Output Series (IPOS) topology presented
in Fig. 4 (b) shares the current in the parallel side while
achieves high voltage in series side. Therefore, it is suitable
for applications where energy storage and load have large
voltage difference. To equally share the power flow among the
modules, voltage controller is needed for individual modules.
Fig. 4 (e) is derived from Fig. 4 (b). Many identical energy
storages can be connected through DC-DC converters and their
outputs are connected in series to achieve high output voltage.
Input Series Output Series (ISOS) configuration of Fig. 4 (c)
shares voltage both in input and output side. It is favorable for
high input and output voltage application. This connection is
especially useful when power increases to MW level since
higher voltage can help to reduce the magnitude of current
to achieve lower loss [5], [6]. However, it is necessary to
implement both input and output voltage sharing control
scheme which increases the control complexity.
In all the above mentioned schemes, the basic power con-
verter module used is the DAB as shown in Fig. 5. The
modular converter design approach not only can match the
different source and load requirements, but also share the
power in each module and thus help to release the switch
stress. Table. I lists the comparison of switch stress and
transformer turns ratio in IPOP, IPOS and ISOS with single
DAB converter respectively. Base values are chosen according
to single DAB rating when same power and same input/output
voltage are used. From Table. I, we can clearly see the
advantages of different topologies in switch rating selection.
For example, the current rating for primary side switches and
voltage rating for the secondary side switches are reduced to
1/n p.u. (as shaded rows) when n modules are connected
 The 2010 International Power Electronics Conference

under IPOS structure. As mentioned before, IPOS structure is

suitable for applications where energy storage and load have
large voltage differences. In other words, lower current rating
in low voltage side and lower voltage rating in high voltage
side is achievable using IPOS structure.
This modular design approach is followed in realizing the
TABLE I
C OMPARISON OF DEVICES STRESS UNDER SAME OUTPUT POWER

IPOP IPOS ISOS

(p.u.) (p.u.) (p.u.)
Primary
Switch Current Rating 1/n 1/n 1
Switch Voltage Rating 1 1 1/n Fig. 7. Steady state input current waveforms in a 4 branch IPOS structure
Secondary (x axis-0.01ms/div; y axis-100A/div)
Switch Current Rating 1/n 1 1
Switch Voltage Rating 1 1/n 1/n
Turns ratio 1 1/n 1

power converter structure in the proposed CESS system.

IV. P ROPOSED POWER CONVERTER STRUCTURE AND
ENERGY MANAGEMENT SCHEME OF THE CESS SYSTEM

To DC bus
iIin1 iII
in1
BAT1 DAB1I Vo1 DAB1II

BAT2 DAB2I DAB2II Fig. 8. Steady state output voltage waveforms in a 4 branch IPOS structure
(x axis-0.01ms/div; y axis-2V/div)

BAT3 DAB3I DAB3II

BAT4
DAB4I DAB4II UC
To DC bus
Fig. 6. Topology of the proposed interleaved DAB based CESS
As shown in Fig. 3, the CESS system consists of both
high energy density and high power density storage. Battery
is selected here as a high energy density storage. Due to
intermittent nature of the renewable energy sources, the
battery needs to source or sink energy for a long period of
time. Therefore, battery capacity has to be high which can
be achieved by connecting multiple batteries. Connecting too
many batteries in series reduces the volumetric efficiency of
the battery bank. For interfacing ultracapacitor with DC bus,
one has to consider that the terminal voltage of ultracapacitor
is less while the DC bus is regulated at high voltage (around
800V for connecting an inverter interfacing a 415V 3 phase
4 wire system). The ultracapacitor needs to supply or absorb
high current for a short duration of time. Considering these
requirements, the modular power converter structure is
adopted for interfacing battery and ultracapacitor to the DC
bus is shown in Fig. 6. The added advantage of such modular
structure is that, if n parallel DAB branches are used, then
by applying the interleaving scheme, the input current and
output voltage ripple frequency can be increased by a factor
of n and ripple magnitude can be reduced to less than 1/n
compared to single DAB as shown in Fig. 7 and Fig. 8. The
control scheme for energy management of this CESS system
is shown in Fig. 9. The symbols used to represent different
variables are defined in the APPENDIX
As mentioned in Section.II, DAB converter as shown in
Fig. 5 is selected as a basic cell in our application. The
power transfer is achieved by phase shifting the voltage
across the transformer primary and secondary sides. If
primary side voltage VA leads the secondary side voltage
VB of Fig. 6 , power is transferred from Vin to Vo which
is defined as positive power transfer. Otherwise, negative
power is transferred. The detailed operating principles of
DAB is explained in [8]. Every DAB has a current control
loop associated with it. The output of the current controller
generates the phase shift information between the input and
output bridges of the DAB module. The task of the energy

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 The 2010 International Power Electronics Conference

Battery
current control VDC VDC
∗
800
iIin1 I φI1
Ci1
SOCjI - Vo1~o4
Energy ∗
iIin1f Vo1 200
SOCjII iIin
iIIin1f~in4f
Management iIIin1f 0
PP V I φIn
iII Ci1
PL ff -
iIinnf iIin1f~in4f
∗ iIin1f 0
iII
in1 II
Vo1 II φ1
∗
II Ci1
Cv1 Fig. 11. Dynamic response for a step change in current demand from the
- -
Vo1 CESS system (Case I)(x axis-40ms/div; voltage-20V/div; current-20A/div)
iII
in1f

Von
∗ As there are n parallel DAB branches, the current reference
VDC
∗
1 II II Il∗
Cvn Ci1 for each branch would be n . In this case, it is assumed that,
n - - φII
Von n all the batteries are at same state of charge. For controlling
iII
innf the DABs interfacing the ultracapacitor, a cascaded control
scheme using inner current control loop and outer voltage
Ultracapacitor current control
control loop is realized. The high frequency component of the
Fig. 9. Control block diagram for the IPOS interleaved DAB converter current demand from the CESS system is added as feedforward
term at the output of the voltage controllers. The value of
this feedforward term for each DAB branch is equivalent to
I∗ Il∗ iI∗ f f . To verify this control strategy, simulation is carried out in
iII
PL −PP V
vDC LPF 1
n To battery
in1
SIMPLORER software. Four parallel branches are considered.
- current controller
Each branch is rated for 1.2kW. The simulation parameters
Ih∗ 1 iII are provided in Table. II. In order to justify the scheme in a
ff1
To ultracapacitor
n
current controller practical scenario, up to 20% variation in leakage inductance
and output capacitance are considered. Fig. 11 shows the
dynamic response of the DC link voltage and the average
Fig. 10. Energy management strategy for case I
converter input currents for step variation in current demand
from the CESS system. In practice, a sudden variation in
management block of CESS is to generate appropriate current current demand can occur for switching on or switching off
reference for each DAB module. Three specific cases of some particular load or for sudden change in solar insolation
power management are discussed in the next three subsections. because of passing clouds. At t=40ms, there is a step increase
in the load current. It is evident from Fig. 11 that ultracapacitor
interfacing converter currents iII in(1f −4f ) compensates for the
A. Case I: Dynamic allocation of power demand to batteries sudden current dynamics and the battery currents iIin(1f −4f )
and ultracapacitor slowly increases to cater to the steady load demand. The time
One objective of the energy storage management system is constant of the LPF shown in Fig. 10 is kept as only 50ms to
to allocate steady power demand to the batteries and transient show the operating principle. In practice, this cutoff frequency
power demand to the ultracapacitor. We can think of a specific has to be set depending on the relative capacity of the battery
example of a DC grid where PV generator and load are and ultracapacitor. Similar response can be seen for a step
connected along with the CESS system. The block diagram decrease in load current at t=120ms.
of the overall control scheme is shown in Fig. 9 and the
current reference generation strategy for this specific case is B. Case II: Energy management of the batteries
shown in Fig. 10. The total current demand from the CESS In an ideal case, all the batteries can source or sink same
system is calculated depending on the difference between current. But in practice, different batteries will be in different
PV power and load power. Here, the current demand can be states of charge and their equalization is required. In the
positive or negative depending on the difference. Next, this example of the previous section, ∗the current reference for
I
current reference is passed through a low pass filter to get all the batteries are set equal as nl . But the energy storage
the low frequency component of the current demand. This management scheme can actually allocate different current
low frequency component Il∗ is used to generate the total references for different batteries depending on their states of
current reference for the battery interfacing power converters. charge. Ref. [11] and [12] explain the needs for SOC control

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Fig. 12. Dynamic response of converter currents when one battery current
reference is made zero (Case II)(x axis-10ms/div; y axis-25A/div)
Fig. 13. Dynamic response of dc link capacitor voltages when one battery
current reference is made zero (Case II)(x axis-10ms/div; y axis-20V/div)
and propose control methods for SOC balancing of the battery
units. One extreme case can be a situation when one of the
battery current has to be made zero to disconnect it. Fig. 12
and Fig. 13 shows the simulation results corresponding to
this dynamics. The current reference to the DAB connected
to the battery-to-be-replaced is slowly made zero starting at
t=20ms. The reduction of this battery power is compensated
by other batteries by increasing their current references. The
voltage controllers adjust the current references of the DABs
connected to the ultracapacitor to regulate Vo(1−4) at the refer-
ence value. Fig. 12 shows the dynamic response of the average
converter input currents for letting one battery current iIin1f
becoming zero. The average currents iIin(2f −4f ) of converters
connected to other batteries slowly increase to compensate.
Because of this change in battery currents, the input current
in1f of DAB1 increases and input currents iin(2f −4f ) of
iII II II
DAB2−4 decrease to regulate the DC bus. Fig. 13 shows
II
that the converter output voltages and the DC link voltage
are regulated to their corresponding references.
C. Case III: State of charge control of ultracapacitor
The ultracapacitor SOC control is also an important re-
quirement of the energy storage management scheme. The
ultracapacitor SOC can be easily estimated from its terminal
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The 2010 International Power Electronics Conference
Fig. 14. Ultracapacitor charging scheme (Case III)(x axis-20ms/div; VDC -
20V/div; Vuc -30V/div; iin1f −4f -10A/div; iuc -50A/div )
voltage. The energy storage management scheme has to main-
tain the ultracapacitor SOC within a band. If the ultracapacitor
voltage falls below the lower band, then the energy storage
management scheme generates appropriate current references
for the battery interfacing and ultracapacitor interfacing DABs
for charging that. The simulation results showing ultracapac-
itor charging process is presented in Fig. 14. For charging
the ultracapacitor, a negative current reference is added to
the controllers of the DABs interfacing it to the DC bus.
Hence, the ultracapacitor current becomes negative as shown
in Fig. 14. To compensate for this outflow of current from the
DC bus, a positive current reference is added to the controllers
of the DABs interfacing the batteries to the DC bus. The
resulting increase in magnitude of average battery currents
iIin(1f −4f ) is shown in Fig. 14. Once the ultracapacitor gets
charged i.e. the ultracapacitor voltage VU C reaches the upper
band, this added offset current is removed. Fig. 14 shows that
there is no disturbance in the DC bus voltage VDC throughout
this process.
V. C ONCLUSION
This paper proposes a composite energy storage system
(CESS) for micro-grid application. This CESS interfaces
battery as a high energy density storage and ultracapacitor
as a high power density storage to the DC bus. The DC-
DC converter structure is formed using DAB modules whose
terminals are connected in series or parallel depending on
feasibility. The proposed modular DC-DC converter topology
along with its energy storage management scheme can flexibly
share the power between different batteries and ultracapacitor.
The scheme is validated using simulation in this paper.
A PPENDIX
The converters connected to batteries and ultracapacitor
are denoted with superscripts I and II respectively. Hence,
their currents and input-output phase shifts are also denoted
by same superscripts. As, the DC link voltage is common
for both sides, no such superscript is used to represent it.
The subscript in and o denotes converter input and output
variables. The subscript f signifies that the variable is output
 The 2010 International Power Electronics Conference

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Ultracapacitor voltage (V) VU C 28-45 2009.
Battery voltage (V) VBAT 36
Output Voltage (V) Vo1 200
Transformer turns ratio n 6.67
Switching frequency (kHz) fs 20
Output Power (kW) Po1 1.2
Leakage Inductance of DAB1I (uH) Lk1 1.20(0%)
Leakage Inductance of DAB2I (uH) Lk2 1.26(5%)
Leakage Inductance of DAB3I (uH) Lk3 1.44(20%)
Leakage Inductance of DAB4I (uH) Lk4 1.32(10%)
Gain in voltage controller Kcv 3
Time constant in voltage controller Tiv 0.00125
Gain in current controller Kci 0.001
Time constant in current controller Tii 0.5
Cut-off frequency for feedback (kHz) fcf 1
Capacitance of output voltage Vo1 (uF) Co1 100(0%)
Capacitance of output voltage Vo2 (uF) Co1 105(5%)
Capacitance of output voltage Vo3 (uF) Co1 120(20%)
Capacitance of output voltage Vo4 (uF) Co1 110(10%)

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