Microgrid control: A comparative study on control strategies for controlling the circulating current

Abstract

Maintaining power quality in microgrid which is a building block of smart grids very important issue. A small deviation in control variables of any source in a microgrid can lead to circulating current, which can cause malfunction of entire system. Circulating current, plays a major role in affecting the power quality. In this paper two control schemes to control the circulating current are proposed and compared. These control schemes aim at controlling the circulating current and maximizing the microgrid efficiency under islanded mode of operation. A Simulink model is developed and the effectiveness of the two control schemes is tested through simulation in MATLAB. Simulation result reveals that control scheme based on multilevel inverter over isolation diode for controlling the circulating current in microgrid offers better performance and conversion efficiency.