Analysis of Voltage Droop Control Method for dc
Microgrids with Simulink: Modelling and
Simulation
Rodrigo A. F. Ferreira1,2 , Henrique A.C. Braga1 , Andre A. Ferreira1 and Pedro G. Barbosa1
1 Power Electronics and Automation Group
Electrical Engineering Department
Federal University of Juiz de Fora
Juiz de Fora, MG
36.036-900 Brazil
AbstractThis work presents a perfomance study of a
dc microgrid when it is used a voltage droop technique to
regulated the grid voltage and to control the load sharing
between different sources. A small model of a dc microgrid
comprising microsources and loads was implemented in
the Simulink/Matlab environment. Some aspects about
centralized (masterslave) and descentralized (voltage
droop) control strategies as well as the procedures to
design the controllers, with and without droop control,
are presented and discussed. Simulation results obtained
with the digital model of the dc microgrid with three
microsources will be presented to validate the effectiveness
of the voltage droop strategy, applied to proportional and
proportionalintegral controllers, to regulate the microgrid
voltage.
Index Termsdc microgrid, dc-dc converter, voltage
droop control.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Microgrid (G) is a electrical network comprising
loads, microsources (S) and communication &
automation systems. These S, also called distributed
sources (DS), increase the offer of energy, the reliability
and the efficiency of electrical power systems since they
are able to operate close to loads and connected to or
not to another electric power network [1].
Nowadays, loads like lighting systems and
electronic equipments (e.g. computers and peripherals
comunication devices, tv sets among others) are
responsable for about 35 % of the electricity
consumption in residential and comercial applications
[2]. All of these loads have a front-end converter to
transform the ac energy to dc. It is expected that this
type of consumption will increase in the near future
2 Electronicsand Automation Group
Federal Institute of Education, Science and
Technology of Southeast of Minas Gerais
Juiz de Fora, MG
36.080-001 Brazil
with the integration of hybrid electric vehicles (EHV)
into the grid.
In the same way, the most of the alternative energy
sources (e.g. photovoltaics, fuel cells, etc.) as well as
many of the energy storage devices such as batteries,
supercapacitors and superconducting magnetic energy
storage systems (SMES) produce and store electrical
energy in direct current. Thus, the design of dc
microgrids is fundamental since the dc loads and
microsources could be easily integrated on the network.
According to [3], the losses in the dc microgrids will
be lower since there is no skin effect and no reactive
power flow in the dc cables. They have additional
advantages of no need of voltage synchronization and
effect of phase imbalance. However, these systems have
drawbacks related to overcurrent protection, since the
fault currents do not have natural zero crossing [4] and
[5], and with the control the network voltage by reactive
power flow, as it happens in ac systems [6].
Figure 1 shows an example of a generic dc microgrid
with microsources, energy storage systems, dc and ac
loads. Static converters connect all devices to the dc grid.
A dc-ac converter is used as interface between the dc G
and the ac electric distribution network. This converter
is blocked in the case of islanded operation of the dc
microgrid.
In this scenario, an important issue related to the
operation of dc microgrids is the dc bus voltage
regulation. Two types of voltage control are commonly
used in the literature: masterslave and voltage droop.
The master-slave method depends on the communication
between the interface converters. The master converter
controls the voltage of the dc bus and sends reference
 A. Master-Slave Control
Figure 2 shows the block diagram of the master-slave
control scheme. In this figure, each block is composed
by a dc source, a static converter and its controller.
The first block, the master module, controls the grid
dc bus voltage while the other blocks, the slaves, are
current controlled. Despite of the fully controllable load
sharing [9], this control scheme has the disadvantage
of needing a fast communication channel since the
reference currents for slave converters are provided by
the master block. The loss of the communication link
or malfuncioning of the master block can shut down the
whole system [7] and [11]. Thus, to avoid or reduce the
probability of failure, this system should be design with
some redundancy.

Fig. 1. Generic topology of a dc microgrid.

I1

Vref VDC
signals to other converters. In the method of voltage
droop, the dc bus voltage is measured at the points of
coupling of the converters and it is used to calculate the I2
amount of energy that each load or source will consume
or supply. I ref
2
IT
In [7] it was presented five different methods of
VDC
droop control and other control methods that need some
level of communication. In [8] and [9] were proposed
In
improvements in the voltage droop control using adaptive
control and integral controllers to reduce steady state
I ref n
errors. In [10], it is proposed a methodology to assure
power sharing between the sources since the power
ratings of the converters are equal. Fig. 2. Schematic diagrama of masterslave control.
The main objective of the this work is to present a
comparative analysis of voltage droop control method
using proportional and proportional-integral controllers B. Voltage Droop Control
to regulate the dc voltage of an isolated dc microgrid. Figure 3 shows the block diagram of the voltage
The dc microgrid, consisting of three dc sources with droop control scheme. Each droop controller emulates
their controllers and a variable load was modeled in an impedance behavior reducing the converter output
the Simulink/Matlab software. Simulation results will voltage with the increase of the supplied current. This
be presented to validate the analysis and the design strategy promotes the current sharing between paralleled
proceedures. converters connected in the dc microgrid without the
need of a central control [7]. The Fig. 4 shows a detail of
II. C ONTROL OF PARALLELED C ONVERTERS the voltage controller of the dc-dc converter. A lowpass
The paralleling of power sources in microgrid filter is used to cut-off harmonic frequencies and fast
applications through power electronics modules offers a oscilations of the dc bus voltage.
number of advantages over the utilization of a single Based on Fig. 4 it is possible to calculate Pref as
high power converter [7]. Two different methods can follows [6] and [10]:
be used to control paralleled converters on a microgrid:    
master-slave and voltage droop [6]. In this section some LP
Pref = G (s) Vref Vdc Vdc , (1)
particularities of each method will be presented. s + LP
 investigated to control paralleled converters connected
I1
to dc microgrid. Despite of the easy implementation of
Vref the P controller it exhibits steady-state errors for step
changes in the reference signal. On the other hand,
converter with a PI controller has the disadvantage
I2 of presenting a poor load sharing due to the integral
Vref characteristic of the compensator [9].
IT

VDC A. Proportional Controller

In
The proportional controller can be designed to impose
a droop on the operation characteristic of the converter in
Vref similar way as it happens when a dc source has a series a
resistance Rd,n . Thus, the gain kp of the transfer function
can be writtes as,
Fig. 3. Schematic diagram of voltage droop control.

1
G (s) = kp = . (3)
vS iL vDC Rd,n

where the subscript n indicates the converter number.

vS Substituting (3) in (1) and assuming 0 dB gain for
vDC d
the low-pass filter, it is possible to write the expression
vREF iREF
bellow for the rated power of the source.

2
Vref,n
+ G (s) I REF Prated,n = n (1 n ) , (4)
VREF Rd,n
VS
lp  
s + lp Vdc
VDC where n = 1 Vref,n is the nominal droop or the
relative converter output voltage droop for the rated
power.
Fig. 4. Voltage control scheme of the dc-dc converter Defining Prated,n , Vref,n and n for each source, it
is possible to calculate the value of Rd,n . A smooth
droop will result in a good voltage regulation to the
where G (s) is the transfer function of the compensator, converters. However, in this case, they will present a poor
Vref is the reference voltage, LP is the cutoff frequency load sharing characteristic. On the other hand, a steep
of the low pass filter, and Vdc is the dc grid voltage at slope will result in a good load sharing characterisitc
the point of the converter coupling. and a poor voltage regulation. From [9] and [10], a good
From (1) the reference current for each converter can microgrid performance is achieved for n in the range
be calculated as follows, of 2 and 5 %.
Pref Since the controller provides a resistive droop
Iref = , (2) behavior for the microsource, the dc bus capacitance
Vs
may be calculated to force a similar performance of a
where Vs is the voltage of the dc source. Butterworth filter for the dc microgrid [10]. Thus, the
III. T HE VOLTAGE D ROOP D ESIGN total capacitance at the source converters side of the DC
bus can be calculated by,
The voltage droop scheme can be viewed as a negative
slope in the converter characteristic in the PV plane. In
this work, two types of controllers, proportional (P) and 4
Cdc,conv = , (5)
proportionalintegral (PI), will have their performance Rd LP
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Fig. 5. Simulink dc microgrid model.

B. Proportional-Integral Controller band i to assure a fast and accurate response for the
A ProportionalIntegral controller given by (6) may converter [12]. It was implemented using a m-function
be used to cancel the steady state error. block with a band of 5 A.
 
1 1 -K-
T .s+1
G (s) = kp 1 + , (6) Vref
T .s
sTi k TF
Pref
1
Iref
P/v
where Ti is the integral time constant of the controller. LP Filter
The gain of the PI can be determined applying the wp
s+wp
methodology used in the Pcontroller. In [9] the author
2
calculates the PI time constant by: vo

3
4 vDG
Ti = . (7)
LP
Fig. 6. Simulink PI block diagram with voltage droop.
IV. S IMULINK M ODELLING AND S IMULATION
Figure 5 shows the block diagram of the system
modelled in the Simulink/Matlab. It has a resistive load 2
and three dc sources. Three boost (stepup) converters Iref
Sum 1 boolean
connect the sources to the dc microgrid. This converter irp s
S Q 1
1 i fcn Conversion 1 d
does not permit the flow of energy from the grid to the iL irn r
R !Q
dc sources. The voltage of the dc microgrid is 750 V. Comparador boolean
N/A
S -R
Figure 6 shows the Simulink block diagram of the delta Conversion 2
Flip -Flop
Sum 2
current controller. The output of this block feeds the Delta

hysteresis controller shown in Fig. 7. The hysteresis

controller has a non-linear comparator with a dead Fig. 7. Simulink hysteresis block diagram.
 DC bus voltage
A. Case # 1 850
Vref
In the first case, the dc sources were modelled as P controller
800

Vdc [V]
ideal sources and all of them with 200 V and a rated PI controller

power equal to 20 kW. The controllers were designed for 750

Rd,n = 1.34 and Cconvn = 17 mF and considering
n = 5 % and LP = 100 rad/s. Table I gives the P 700
0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4 0.45 0.5
and PI parameters. The reference voltage supplied to the Time(s)
Average Power
controller is 750 V . 10

TABLE I 9
P AND PI PARAMETERS

P [kW]
8

7
Parameter Value
6
kp (W/V 2 ) 0.75 0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4 0.45 0.5
Time(s)
Ti (ms) 12.73
Fig. 9. Detail of the dc bus voltage.

Figure 8 shows the voltage of the dc microgrid and

the behavior of the powers supplied by each converter to
the load for a P and PI controller, respectively. From 0
to 50 ms the microgrid is energized. In t = 250 ms the
value of the power drained by the load is step changed
from 20 kW to 30 kW . Fig. 9 shows the detail of the
microgrid dc voltage and of the converter powers during
the load variation.
DC bus voltage
1000
Vdc [V]
response. However, the steady state error is canceled. For
the PIcontroller, the power supplied to the load varies
from 20.05 kW to 29.89 kW in t = 250 ms. Since all
the dc sources are equals the three converters have the
same behavior.
B. Case # 2
In this second study it will be analysed the behavior
of the system for the case of the sources having different
values. The three dc sources voltages are 250 V , 200 V
and 150 V , respectively. All the other parameters are not

500
Transitory Vref changed.
P controller
PI controller
Figure 10 shows the voltage of the dc microgrid and
0 the behavior of the powers supplied by each converter
0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4 0.45 0.5
Time(s) to the load for a P and PI controller, respectively.
Average Power
10 As in the previous case, the load is step changed in
t = 250 ms. Fig. 11 shows the detail of the dc
voltage and power supplied by each converter. Despite
P [kW]

5
0 characteristic indicates that the design of the controller
0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25
Time(s)
Fig. 8. Behavior of the dc bus voltage (top) and average supplied
power (bottom) for balanced dc sources.
Analyzing the results it is possible to conclude that
the Pcontroller has a faster response. However, the
dc voltage is equal to 740 V before the load step
change and 730 V after. The total power supplied to
the load varies from 19.28 kW to 27.86 kW . On the
other hand, the PIcontroller exhibits slower transient
of the zero steady-state error, the PIcontrollers force an
oscillatory behavior for the powers of the sources. This
0.3 0.35 0.4 0.45 0.5
should be done carefully to avoid unstable operation of
the microgrid.
V. C ONCLUSION
This work presented simulation results of a dc
microgrid with droop voltage regulation. Some aspects
of the design of the voltages controllers were presented.
Two types of compensators, with voltage droop, were
investigated. The Pcontroller exhibited a faster response
while the PI showed a better power regulation and a zero
steadystate error. Both controllers, P and PI, exhibited
a good load sharing characteristic. The voltage droop
 DC bus voltage
1000 CAPES, Federal University of Juiz de Fora and Federal
800
Institute of Education, Science and Technology of
Southeast of Minas Gerais.
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Vdc [V]

Vref
400 P controller R EFERENCES
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method demonstrated to be a good strategy to share the

currents between different converters without the need
of a central controller. The preliminary results indicates
that this type of control is a good option to integrate
distributed energy sources into a microgrid. Non-linear
control, such as SMC (Sliding Mode Control) has been
investigated to replace the voltage droop scheme.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to express their gratitude
for the financial support offered by FAPEMIG, CNPq,