Distributed Control Strategies for Microgrid Systems

Distributed control strategies for microgrid systems decentralise decision-making among interconnected distributed energy resources, sensors and actuators to enhance reliability, resilience and scalability. By allocating control intelligence at local nodes and enabling peer-to-peer communication, such approaches mitigate single-point failures and reduce latency. Architectures typically employ a three-layer hierarchy: primary control ensures immediate voltage and frequency stability via droop or virtual-impedance methods; secondary control restores set-points and improves power sharing through consensus, model predictive or observer-based schemes; and tertiary control optimises economic dispatch and network constraints across multiple microgrids. Contemporary developments focus on plug-and-play capability, cyber-physical security and minimal communication overhead. Practical deployments span off-grid islanded systems, grid-connected renewable clusters and multi-microgrid energy communities, underscoring global significance in decarbonisation, energy access and resilience against extreme events.

Research from Nature Portfolio

Recent studies have demonstrated a consensus-based secondary control algorithm that achieves rapid active and reactive power sharing in hybrid AC/DC microgrids, validated on a real-time hardware-in-the-loop platform. Another work introduced an event-triggered distributed model predictive control framework for islanded microgrids, significantly reducing communication traffic while preserving voltage regulation under varying loads. A further advance proposed a resilient plug-and-play control architecture employing adaptive observers and cyber-secure communication layers to maintain stability even during network partitioning or component failures.

Research from all publishers

Investigations into adaptive droop control have yielded algorithms that estimate feeder impedances online and adjust droop coefficients to suppress circulating currents in DC microgrids, markedly improving load sharing accuracy. A decentralised robust control strategy within the Internet-of-Energy paradigm employed a two-level communication scheme—local TCP/IP and global MQTT—to coordinate voltage, frequency and power sharing across geographically distributed units. Additionally, a delay-tolerant consensus-based secondary frequency and voltage control has been developed for droop-controlled AC microgrids, offering finite-time convergence and robustness to communication latency while maintaining plug-and-play integration of new generation units.

Distributed Control Strategies for Microgrid Systems publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in distributed control strategies for microgrid systems across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Microgrid: A localized grouping of distributed energy resources and loads that can operate autonomously or connected to the main grid.

Droop control: A primary control method that adjusts inverter output based on deviations in voltage or frequency to share load without communication.

Consensus algorithm: A distributed protocol enabling multiple controllers to agree on shared variables such as power set-points.

Model predictive control (MPC): A control strategy that optimises future behaviour over a prediction horizon subject to system constraints.

Event-triggered control: A scheme that updates control actions only when predefined conditions are met, reducing communication load.

Plug-and-play capability: The ability to add or remove generation units without redesigning the overall control architecture.

References

1. Stable current sharing and voltage balancing in DC microgrids: A consensus-based secondary control layer. Automatica (2018).
2. Event‐triggered distributed model predictive control for resilient voltage control of an islanded microgrid. International Journal of Robust and Nonlinear Control (2020).
3. Adaptive Droop Control Method for Suppressing Circulating Currents in DC Microgrids. IEEE Open Access Journal of Power and Energy (2020).
4. A New Decentralized Control Strategy of Microgrids in the Internet of Energy Paradigm. Energies (2021).
5. Consensus-Based Delay-Tolerant Distributed Secondary Control Strategy for Droop Controlled AC Microgrids. IEEE Access (2021).