COMPARISON BETWEEN THE DROOP CONTROL AND THE MASTER-SLAVE CONTROL WITHOUT COMMUNICATION IN MICROGRIDS OPERATING IN AUTONOMOUS MODE.
Distributed generation. Power sharing. Droop control. Master-slave without communication technique. Small signals model.
A microgrid is defined by the set of distributed generation units (GD), storage units and loads, which connected in parallel form a small electrical power system. The microgrid can operate connected to the utility grid, where the loads are fed through GD units and the power deficit is provided by the grid. In this operating mode, the voltage and frequency reference is defined by the network. Another possible scenario is when the utility grid is not available and the microgrid must operate autonomously (isolated), in this situation the power flow between the GD units and the loads must be balanced, that is, the power supplied by each GD unit must be proportional to its nominal capacity. In this work, a comparative study is carried out between the droop control strategy and a new control technique called master-slave without communication, in microgrids operating in autonomous mode. In order to represent the dynamic behavior of microgrids, in this work a small-signal mathematical model of the master-slave without communication microgrid is proposed and the small-signal mathematical model of the droop microgrid is developed. From the mathematical model of both microgrids, the stable region in the complex plane is compared for different values of the droop coefficients. The performance of control techniques in power sharing is evaluated through a set of merit figures. Finally, the performance of both microgrids is evaluated under non-linear and unbalanced load operating conditions, and an unbalanced voltage compensation strategy is implemented in the master-slave without communication microgrid.