In DC microgrids, constant power loads (CPLs) reduce the effective damping of the DC-DC converter and may induce destabilizing effects into the DC-DC converter. To overcome such problems regarding CPL and ensure large-signal stability of DC-DC converters in DC microgrids, some feedforward terms are added to $V$ - $I$ droop-based dual-loop controller for a DC-DC converter based on the large-signal model. It is proven that the feedforward terms can not only improve the transient response but also guarantee the exponential stability of the closed-loop system in the whole operating range in regards to a large-signal manner, which is verified by using a singular perturbation model. Moreover, a disturbance observer is designed to estimate the output current, thereby enabling the removal of the current measurement sensor. The proposed technique can be easily plugged into a pre-defined $V$ - $I$ droop-based dual-loop controller without an additional sensor being required. Ultimately, both simulation and experimental tests verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.

A novel grid voltage modulated direct power control (GVM-DPC) strategy for a grid-connected voltage source converter is proposed to control the instantaneous active and reactive powers directly. The GVM-DPC method consists of a nonlinear GVM controller, a conventional controller (feedforward and PI feedback), and nonlinear damping. The proposed control strategy shows a relationship between DPC and voltage-oriented control methods designed in d-q frame. The main advantage is that the proposed method makes the system be a linear time-invariant system, which enables us to apply various control methods easily. The GVM-DPC guarantees not only the convergence rate but also the steady-state performance of the system. Moreover, it is ensured that the closed-loop system is exponentially stable. Finally, simulation and experimental results using a 2.2-kVA VSC are provided to validate the tracking performance and robustness of the proposed control architecture. In addition, the total harmonic distortion of the current is 1.9% which is much less than the requirement for grid operation.

This paper proposes a reduced-order small-signal closed-loop transfer function model based on Jordan continued fraction expansion to assess the dynamic characteristics of the droop-controlled inverter and provide the preprocessing method for the real-time simulation of power systems. Firstly, dynamic phasors, time delay and zero-order hold are embedded into the small-signal model at the same time, then the closed-loop transfer function of the droop-controlled inverter is built. Compared with the existing closed-loop transfer function approaches, the accuracy of the built transfer function model is dramatically enhanced. Meanwhile, the inner cascaded voltage/current controller parameters are also designed. In order to directly obtain and preserve the maximum overshoot and settling time, which are main features to evaluate the system input-output dynamic response characteristics, the reduced second order closed-loop transfer function is proposed through the continued-fraction expansion regarding arbitrary points on the real frequency axis. Therein, this second order closed-loop transfer function with dynamic response of the original inverter is reduced to the lowest order. Furthermore, combined with the impedance-based approach, the proposed stability assessment approach is utilized to analyze the stability of the microgrid with multiple converters. Finally, simulations and experimental results demonstrate the convenience and accuracy of the proposed approach.

We propose a vector current control derived from direct power control (VCC-DPC) for a three-phase voltage source inverter (VSI) in the synchronous rotating frame through instantaneous real and reactive powers. The proposed VCC-DPC method has the same control structure as the conventional VCC except for the coordinate transformation, since we obtain the d-q axes currents model of VSI without using Park transformation and the PLL system. Consequently, the proposed method has the same property as the conventional VCC if the PLL extracts the phase angle of the grid voltage correctly. However, with the consideration of the slow dynamics of the PLL, the proposed method has an enhanced dynamical performance feature compared with the conventional VCC. Moreover, it has another benefit that the reduction of the computational burden could be expected since there is no Park transformation and the PLL in the controller implementation. We can guarantee that the closed-loop system with the proposed method is exponentially stable in the operating range. Finally, both simulation and experimental results using a 15-kW-inverter system match the theoretical expectations closely.

In this paper, we design a voltage-modulated direct power control (VM-DPC) for a three-phase voltage source inverter (VSI) connected to a weak grid, where the phase-locked loop (PLL) system may make the system unstable if the conventional vector current control (VCC) method is applied. Compared with the conventional VCC method, the main advantage of the proposed VM-DPC method is that the PLL system is eliminated. Moreover, in order to inject the rated real power to the weak grid, the VSI system should generate some certain amount of reactive power as well. An eigenvalues-based analysis shows that the system with the proposed method tracks its desired dynamics in the certain operating range. Both simulation and experimental results match the theoretical expectations closely.