Power Management and Control Strategy for Hybrid

AC/DC Microgrids in Autonomous Operation Mode

Mohammad Abuhilaleh, Li Li, Mahmuda Begum, Jianguo Zhu
Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, University of Technology Sydney,Sydney,NSW 2007, Australia
Email: Mohammad.m.abuhilaleh@student.uts.edu.au

Abstract--The hybrid AC/DC microgrid structure is Different issues of integrating renewable energy sources
considered to be the future trend of power systems, due to the (RES) with microgrids were analysed in terms of scheme
vital necessity of connecting more renewable energy sources design and power management [3]. Also, the main
and storage elements to supply modern AC and DC loads. structure of AC, DC and hybrid microgrids were discussed
This paper proposes a power sharing and control strategy for in the same study. These varying microgrid configurations
hybrid AC/DC microgrids using the droop control technique.
A new structure of the hybrid microgrid is suggested by
are rapidly growing in response to the growing penetration
connecting different AC, and DC sub-grids by an interlinking of therenewable energy sources and modern DC loads.
converter. This can be symbolized by a bi-directional These renewable energy sources and loads need more
converter that acts as a rectifier when power flows from the conversion interfaces and thus more control coordination
AC sub-grid to the DC subgrid. And operates as an inverter to allow mutual interaction with the main grid. Power
when power flows from the DC subgrid to the AC one. The converter act as a voltage-source inverter (VSI) or as a
proposed structure and power management strategy also current source inverter (CSI) connected in parallel during
allow power flows between DC sides of the system through the the islanded mode. Connecting two or more DGs in parallel
AC subgrid as a common bus. Five scenarios of transferring results in high circulating current due to a small difference
power from one sub-grid to another are studied using.
MATLAB/Simulink. The results indicate a high level of the
in the voltage levels of the DGs. This triggers numerous
system’s felexibility in managing th power flow. adverse effects such reduce the life of the equipment,
Index Terms-- hybrid AC/DC microgrid, interlinking power losses on the cable due to the thermal heat, and
converter, power sharing, droop control. limited capacity of transferred active power[4].
To avoid such problems, the droop control method with
I. INTRODUCTION virtual output impedance loop is usually implemented in
the primary control level. In addition, it mimics the
Microgrid is a small power grid that involves
behaviour of the power generator and regulates the
distributed generations (DGs), storage elements (SEs) and
frequency and voltage within acceptable ranges with
various types of loads. DGs are used to express the varying
respect to the operator’s specifications [5]. It is viewed as
renewable energy generations such as the wind,
a general approach towards standardization in hierarchical
photovoltaic, biomass, and wave energy. Storage elements
control in AC and DC microgrids. The main purpose of this
also have different forms including batteries,
method is to guarantee that the amount of power sharing
ultracapacitors, and flywheels. Microgrid can either be
should be in proportion to the power rating of each source.
connected to the main grid, where the voltage and
This will be discussed in detail in the next section of this
frequency are fixed by the main grid, or operated in an
paper. In the case of hybrid AC/DC microgrid, droop
autonomous (islanded) mode, where the voltage and
control is also considered to be the most practical method
frequency vary according to the DGs and control systems.
to manage the power flow between AC and DC sub-grids.
Thus, the islanded operation mode usually lasts for a short
Different structures of interlinking converters (ILC) can be
period especially when faults occur at either the maingrid
used to link AC and DC subgrids together with the
or the microgrid [1].
capability of bidirectional power flow [6]. Power
Microgrid has different structures depending on how the
management in hybrid AC/DC microgrids using droop
AC and DC sources are connected to the loads and the grid.
control method was investigated in [7].
Basically, there are three main structures: the first involves
However, there are some disadvantages of using this
the DC microgrid, where the DGs and SEs are connected
conventional control method. It underperforms when
to the DC bus directly or through power electronic devices.
power sharing involves nonlinear loads as the control units
The second structure involves the AC microgrid where the
in which harmonic currents exist in the balancing process
DGs and SEs are connected to an AC bus. The third one is
of active and reactive power. In this paper, we propose a
the hybrid AC/DC microgrid structure where some of the
power management and control strategy of a new structure
DGs and SEs are connected to a DC bus while the
of the hybrid DC/AC/DC microgrid. The proposed
remaining ones are connected to an AC bus. In such a
configuration has the ability to transfer power from AC to
structure, the DC and AC buses are linked through
DC, DC to AC, and the DC to DC sub-grid. This paper is
interlinking converters (ILCs) that transfer power from one
organized as follows. In Section II, the hybrid microgrid
sub-grid to another. Power management is considered to be
the main challenge in this configuration [2].

978-1-5386-3246-8/17/$31.00 © 2017 IEEE

 Fig.1. Hybrid microgrid structure with detailed

structure is presented in detail. In Section III, power autonomous mode. This usually lasts for short periods. In
sharing using the droop control technique is discussed such case, the primary purpose of the hybrid microgrid
within the AC, DC and AC/DC sub-grid. Section IV controller is to manage the supply and demand within each
analyses the interlinking converter (ILC) control and its subgrid and the system, through voltage and frequency
block diagram. Then, Section V presents the simulation control. This issue is considered to be the main challenge
results of five scenarios implemented in this paper to verify in power management of such microgrids [9]. There are
our work. Finally, Section VI gives the conclusions and the many advantages for adopting such structure. It can reduce
future trends of the hybrid microgrids. the total cost by reducing the required conversion devices.
Thus, improving the overall system efficiency.
II. HYBRID AC/DC MICROGRID STRUCTURE Furthermore, further reduction of the total conversion
Fig. 1 illustrates the proposed hybrid AC/DC microgrid losses could be attained by eliminating the redundant stages
structure. The microgrid is composed of an AC sub-grid of power conversion. Connecting more sub-grids to the
and two DC sub-grids. DC capacitors are connected to the hybrid microgrid will increase the total power rating, which
DC voltage buses to stabilize the output voltage (V_dc). leads to an improved system reliability[8].
On the AC side, a three-phase L filter is used at each
terminal of the ILC to suppress the voltage ripple and III. POWER SHARING AMONG SUB-GRIDS
current harmonics generated by the load and to limit the Droop control method is considered as one of the most
electromagnetic interference. The necessary parameters common methods used in the power sharing of microgrid
related to the model and controller are provided in Table.1. without the need for communications among sub-grids.
Each sub-grid should have the ability to manage the power This method can be used in AC and DC microgrids as
flow in accordance with its respective load. The surplus explained in the following sub-sections.
power will be transferred to the other sub-grids to
compensate any power shortage. Six IGBT- Diode TABLE 1
switches, (S1 - S6), are used to create a bi-directional HYBRID MICROGRID CONTROL - SYSTEM PARAMETERS
converter that operates in two modes depending on the Unit Parameters Simulation
direction of the power flow. Mode one; when the ILC acts L_ac1 0.2mH
as a rectifier, the DC side is viewed as a load from the AC
L_ac2 0.2mH
side. Thus, the power flows from the AC side to the DC AC
side. On the other hand, in mode two; the ILC works as an f 50±1Hz
Sub-grid
inverter, and the AC side is regarded as a load from the DC Vac( L-N) 380 V
side view. Therefore, the power flows in the opposite Pacmax 3 kW
direction. The amount of transferred power from one
L_dc1 0.5mH
subgrid to another depends mainly on the supply (DG
output) and the demand (load) for each sub-grid [8]. DC C1 1000µF
The microgrid usually works in the grid connected mode Sub-grid 1 Vdc1 600 ± 50 V
to keep the voltage and frequency within high levels of P1max 6 kW
stability, avoiding any contingencies that may occur due to
L_dc2 0.5mH
power shortages. The intelligent transfer switch or the
circuit breaker which connects the subgrid to the main grid DC C2 1000µF
remains closed in the normal state until planned events like Sub-grid 2 Vdc2 600 ± 50 V
regular maintenance or breakdowns such as faults or P2max 3 kW
emergencies forcing the microgrid to work in an
 Fig. 2. Normalized method for power sharing in hybrid microgrid
A. Power Sharing within DC Sub-grid
In DC microgrids, active power slightly varies with the
DC voltage magnitude. DGs share a common resistive load
with a specific amount of power proportional to the
capacity of each DG, as shown in Fig. 3. Virtual output
impedance is usually used in the primary control level to
decrease the circulating current that results from the
voltage difference in the parallel connected DGs [9]. The
reference of output voltage Vdc in P/V droop equation can
be written as:
= ∗
− (1)
−
α= (2)
Here, V*dc represents the maximum output voltage that can
be achieved at no load condition, and α is the coefficient of
droop control which indicates the change range of voltage
with load, as given in (2). Vdcmax and Vdcmin are the maximum
and minimum allowable deviation of the output voltage. It
usually lies within -6% to +10%. [10, 11]. The DG units
will rightfully share the load demand in proportion to their
nominal power rating. This expression can be formulated
as:
_ _ _ the hybrid microgrid, the standarised individual variations
= = (3)
_ _ _
B. Power Sharing within AC Sub-grid
In the case of AC sub-grid, the situation is more
complicated. Active and reactive power varies with
frequency and voltage magnitude respectively. The P/f and
Q/V droop control method is used to control the frequency
and voltage. Thus the droop control can be defined as
follows:
= ∗− × (4)
∗
= − × (5)
where ω* and V* are the maximum frequency and voltage
at no load condition. m and n are the droop coefficients
which can be determined as:
Fig.3. Active power sharing in (A) DC and (B) AC microgrid
− −
= , = (6)
2
where, fmax, fmin, Vmax, and Vmin are the maximum and
minimum values of the allowed deviation for frequency
and voltage respectively. The acceptable limits of
frequency in the islanded microgrid operation range
between 49.5 Hz and 50.5 Hz.[10, 11]. Pmax and Qmax
represent the maximum active and reactive power
delivered by the inverter.
C. Power Sharing within Hybrid AC/DC Microgrid.
Within the AC sub-grid and the DC sub-grid interface,
managing the power flow is considered as the main issue.
Droop control method is also employed to control the ILCs,
responsible for linking the AC and DC buses in the
autonomous operation, as shown in Fig.4. The idea of the
proposed power-sharing strategy is that each subgrid will
manage its own power flow. The surplus power will be
delivered to the other sub-grids depending on the shortage
and surplus power for both sub-grids. When the power
flows from the AC to DC side, the ILC works as a parallel
DC source, sharing the DC sub-grid load. It also operates in
opposite direction when the power flows from the DC to
AC side.
To apply the droop control method for power sharing in
of the output voltage at the DC side, and frequency at the
AC side should be identical. The normalization process
technique is used to bring the frequency at the AC side and
the voltage at DC side to a standardised measure as shown
in Fig 2.The f´ and V´ indicate the per unit value of
frequency and voltage respectively. These indicies range
from -1 to 1 where the negative sign represents the
overloaded situation and the positive sign indicates the
underloaded situation in the subgrid. This means that, the
load reaches the maximum limit of the capacity of the AC
sub-grid when the f´ equals one [12]. The previously
mentioned index can be calculated as follows:
´
= ( − 0.5( + ))⁄0.5( − ) (7)
Fig.4. Power sharing in hybrid microgrid
 ´ scenarios are discussed according to the power flow and the
= ( − 0.5( + ))/0.5( − )
Here, f and V represent the measured frequency and voltage
at the terminal of each sub-grid. f max, f min, Vmax, and Vmin are
the maximum and minimum values of voltage and
frequency at no load condition, and full load condition,
respectively. The output reference of combined f´ and V´
represents the amount and direction of power flow between
the AC and DC sub-grids. When using more than one sub-
grid, as in our case, the frequency at the AC side will be
equalized with the voltages of both DC sides. Thus, any
change in the power level at any of the aforementioned
buses will affect the whole system and all the other
subgrids.The immediate response to the change involves
exporting or importing power that is proportional to their
respective power ratings as shown in Fig.4.
IV. INTERLINKING CONVERTER CONTROL
The detailed control block diagram of ILC used in this
paper is shown in Fig 6. The main purpose of the droop
control method is tracking the amount of power which
should be transferred from a sub-grid to another. The
following steps illustrate the control process in detail.
Firstly, a phase-locked loop (PLL) is used to detect the
frequency(f´), phase angle(θ) and, the voltage magnitude of
the three-phase voltage and current at the AC subgrid.
Secondly, at the DC side, the voltage of the DC sub-grids
V´dc1 and V´dc2 are being sensed, and the measured
parameters are then converted to their per unit values. The
differences in these values (f´,V´dc) are used to determine
the reference power (P*) before being fed to the
proportional-integral (PI) controller. The sign of the
merging process gestures the direction of the flow, and the
reference power is then converted to the active reference
current (I*d) which have been derived and given as:
∗ ∗
= (2 × )⁄(3 × | |)
where; p* and |V| represent the delivered power and the AC
voltage magnitude respectively. The current command is
then supplied to the inner control loop. The current control
loop is used in conjunction with the modified vector
decoupling control technique. This method can be
implemented by feed-forwarding the line voltage
components to achieve higher performance. It also allows
controlling active and reactive power drawn from the grid
separately, so that it works at a unity power factor when the
reference value of I*q is set to zero as shown in Fig.5.5.
Finally, another PI controller is used to mimic the
reference current. The output dq references are then
transferred to their corresponding abc components. Five
Fig. 5. Modelling of the system in the dq frame
(8)
loading condition at each subgrid as follows.
A. Scenario1: Steady State Scenario
It’s obvious that this is the steady state event where load
demand at each subgrid is much less than the available
power, with (V´dc1) = (f´ac) = 0 and , (f´ac) = (V´dc2) =0 . This
situation forces voltage and frequency to be within the
nominal range. Since there is no difference between the
normalized values, the power flow in the ILC is almost zero.
According to this condition, every sub-grid is supposed to
manage the power flow within its own boundary.
B. Scenario 2: DC Subgrid 1 is Overloaded;
This scenario initiates at t=0.5s, when the DC sub-grid1
is overloaded. This means that the total load at this sub-grid
exceeds the generated power while no load change happens
in other sub-grids. Thus, the voltage level at DC side 1
reaches the minimum limit and this forces other sub-grids
to respond to the aforementioned shortage in DC side 1 by
transferring a specific amount of power from the AC
subgrid to the DC side1. DC subgrid 2 will also react to the
change in frequency at the AC side and directly respond by
exporting power to the DC subgrid 1 through the AC side
(acting as a common bus between two DC sides). The
delivered power will be proportional to the power rating
capacity of each sub-grid and matches the shortage power.
C. Scenario 3: AC Subgrid is Overloaded
This situation happens when the load in the AC subgrid
exceeds the generated power capacity of the AC sub-grid.
The loads at other sub-grids are within the nominal power
range. This leads to the power injected into the AC side
from the DC sub-grid1 and subgrid2, in accordance with
their active power capacity. In this case, both ILCs work as
an inverter and the resulting sign of the power flow is
negative.
(9)
D. Scenario 4:DC Subgrid 2 Overloaded
This situation happens in the DC sub-grid 2 at t=2s. The
power will flow from the AC side and DC side 1 to the DC
side 2.
E. Scenario 5: Disconnecting DC Subgrid1
Sudden changes in DC sub-grid 1 involve its
disconnection from the whole system for unplanned events
such as validation checks of the system and emergency
breakdowns. In this case, other sub-grids are required to
manage the power flow in the whole system.
V. SIMULATION RESULTS
To verify the proposed system structure and control
method used in this paper, numerical simulations are
conducted using MATLAB/Simulink software. The
summarized power flow scenarios are shown in Table 2.
The first scenario illustrates the steady state event of the
whole system as mentioned in the previous section. Fig.7
indicates that the power flow between sub-grids is almost
zero, while its loads consume most of the power produced
from the sub-grid sources. Power losses of ILCs and line
 Fig. 6. Interlinking converter control diagram

impedances are neglected in this work. At t=0.5s, a sudden
load change from (3 to 7.78) kW occurred in DC sub-grid1.
If no power is imported from other sub-grids, DC subgrid
1 will collapse as the maximum capacity of its power
source is 6 kW. This will not happen due to the use of
power-sharing strategy. Thus, 2.43 kW is transferred from
the AC subgrid and DC sub-grid 2 with equal shares.
Then, at t=1s, the change happens to the AC sub-grid
where the AC load increased from 1.5kW to 3.87 kW. This
situation forces other DC subgrids to export power to the
AC sub-grid. The DC subgrid 1 injects -1.24 kW while DC
subgrid 2 inject -0.62kW to compensate. The negative sign
indicates the direction of power flow (DC to AC side). In
this case, ILCs work as an inverter. In DC subgrid 2 the
load changes to 3.9kW at t=1.5s. The consumed power by
the load becomes extremely high and exceeds the rating of
its output power source. In this instance, the designed
system forces DC subgrid1 and AC subgrid to deliver 1.8
kW to overcome the overload situation. Finally, at t = 2s,
the DC subgrid 1is disconnected from the whole system
and the hybrid microgrid relies only on the AC subgrid and
DC subgrid 2. The aim in this scenario is for each subgrid
to produce more power to compensate the absence of DC
subgrid 1. The detailed power flow of the above scenarios
is given in Table 2.
One of the advantages of the ILC is its ability to
instantaneously change from absorbing power (inverter
mode) to delivering power (rectifier mode) and from the
AC side and vice versa. It also shows the operation of the
rectifier at unity power factor when the reactive power
reference is set to zero.Fig.8 shows the simulation results
of voltage and current at the AC side and DC side1. At
t=0.5s, the DC 1 voltage is adjusted to 560 V which is less
than the threshold voltage (600V). Thus, the reference
current is positive, and ILC work in rectifier mode at unity
power factor. Moreover it can be noted that the change of
the working mode at t=1s causes the reference current of
the ILC to change its polarity from 4A to -2A. It is also
observable that the AC current at the AC side changed to
be out of phase with the voltage, indicating the power flow
direction. The simulation result of voltage and current at
AC and DC side 2 are based on the power flow between
these subgrids. As discussed above, the mode of operation
is changed from -1A to 3A at t=1.5s due to the changes of
the load at DC subgrid2.

TABLE 2
SUMMARIZED POWER FLOWS OBTAINED THROUGH TESTING
Power flow (kW)
Scenario T1 T2 T3 T4 T5
AC source 1.5 2.66 2.11 2.09 2.65
AC load
1.5 1.5 3.78 1.5 1.5
DC source 1 3 5.35 4.23 4.18 3
DC load 1
3 7.78 3 3 3
DC source 2 1.5 2.67 2.12 2.1 2.65
DC load 2
1.5 1.5 1.5 3.9 3.9
ILC1 0 2.43 -1.24 -1.18 0
ILC2
0 -1.17 -0.62 1.8 1.24
Fig. 7. Simulated active power flows for five scenarios.
 Fig. 8. Simulated voltages and currents for five transient events
VI. CONCLUSION
This paper proposed a power sharing strategy in hybrid
AC/DC microgrid using droop control method. Three
subgrids were connected together to form DC/AC/DC
microgrid. These subgrids were linked by an interlinking
converter. Such structure has not been previously
investigated and would definitely be useful for future
expansion of renewable sources integration. The main
objective of the ILC is to manage the power flow between
the subgrids according to the generation and demand
parameters for each subgrid. Different scenarios of power
flow were studied using MATLAB/ Simulink. The results
confirm the applicability of the proposed structure and
control scheme. An experimental implementation of the
proposed system should be the next step in further
optimizing the results.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Mohammad Abuhilaleh would like to thank sincerely
Al-Hussain Bin Talal University for their financial support.
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