Decentralized Control Strategy for Optimal Energy Management in Grid-Connected and Islanded DC Microgrids

This paper proposes a decentralized control technique to minimize the total operation cost of a DC microgrid in both grid-connected and islanded modes. In this study, a cost-based droop control scheme based on the hourly bids of all participant distributed generators (DGs) and the hourly energy price of the utility is presented. An economic power sharing technique among various types of DG units is adopted to appropriately minimize the daily total operation cost of DC microgrid without a microgrid central controller. The DC microgrid may include non-dispatchable DG units (such as photovoltaic systems) and dispatchable generation units. Unlike other energy management techniques, the proposed method suffers neither from forecasting errors for both load demand and renewable energy power prediction modules, nor from complicated optimization techniques. In the proposed method, all DGs and the utility are classified in a sorting rule based on their hourly bids and open market price, and then the droop parameters are determined. The simulation results are presented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method using MATLAB/SIMULINK software. The results show that the proposed strategy is able to be implemented in various operation conditions of DC microgrid with resistance to uncertainties.