Decentralised L1 Adaptive Primary Controllers and Distributed Consensus-Based Secondary Control for DC Microgrids with Constant-Power Loads

Constant-power loads are notoriously known to destabilise power systems, such as DC microgrids, due to their negative incremental impedance. This paper equips distributed generation units with decentralised L1 adaptive controllers at the primary level of the microgrid control hierarchy. Necessary and sufficient conditions are provided to local controllers for overall microgrid stability when constant-power loads are connected. The advantages of the architecture over conventional heuristic approaches are: (i) scalable design, (ii) plug-and-play functionality, (iii) well defined performance and robustness guarantees in a heterogeneous and uncertain system, and (iv) avoids the need for online measurements to obtain non-a priori system impedance information. The proposed primary control architecture is evaluated with distributed consensus-based secondary level controls using a bus-connected DC microgrid, which consists of DC-DC buck and boost converters, linear and non-linear loads. Stability of the overall hierarchical control system is proven using a unit-gain approximation of the primary level.