Optimal adaptive droop control for effective load sharing in AC microgrids

During the past few years, microgrids (MGs) have been becoming more attractive as effective means to integrate different distributed energy resources (DERs). To coordinate active and reactive power sharing among DERs, conventional droop control method is widely used as a decentralized control scheme. However, sharing powers among the sources based on the units' rated capacities is not an optimal solution in terms of economy and efficiency. In this paper, a new adaptive droop-based control strategy is proposed for AC MGs to optimally share MG load between corresponding units. The mentioned control strategy is developed in two levels. The upper control level is a mixed-objective optimization algorithm that provides optimal set-points for power generations considering system's constraints and goals, while the lower control level is responsible for tracking the reference signals coming from the upper level. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy under different operating scenarios, simulation results in a benchmark MG are also presented.