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DISTRIBUTED GENERATION SYSTEMS AFFECTED BY DELAY OF WIRELESS
COMMUNICATION WHILE LOAD SHARING
RAJASHRI R. NARWADE & SONAL GAHANKARI
Saraswati College of Engineering, Kharghar, Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

ABSTRACT
This paper is concerned with the control strategy for the parallel operation of distributed generation systems (DGS)
rely on the underlying wireless communication channels to exchange power information among them for load sharing
control. Study has shown that the time-varying wireless communication delay may have a significant impact on the
performance of power inverters. In this, paper aim is to fill this gap and study the performance of distributed power inverters
under the scenario of wireless-enabled smart microgrids and overcome this delay problem the proposed method used is a
new controller design based on smith predictor to provide a smooth load sharing performance.
KEYWORDS: Distributed Generation Systems (DGS), Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) Inverters
INTRODUCTION
Recently, interest in distributed generation systems (DGS) is rapidly increasing, particularly onsite generation.
This interest is due to the facts that larger power plants are economically unfeasible in many regions due to increasing
system, the rising fuel price and environmental regulations. Smart microgrids have been receiving more and more research
attentions recently. Conceptually, a smart microgrid is made up of various generation sources (fuel cells, energy storage
devices, small wind turbines, solar/photovoltaic systems, small hydro turbines) [1], different energy consumption devices,
and/or energy management platform.
A smart grid is a form of electricity network utilizing digital technology. Smart grid delivers electricity from
suppliers to consumers using two-way digital communications to control appliances at consumer level.
Subsystems in smart microgrids are interconnected by local microgrids and wireless communication networks.
Energy from both local and remote energy sources flows along the microgrids, while energy management information
needed to control the entire system is transmitted through the wireless communications networks.
Introduction of such smart microgrids is very attractive for campuses, commercial facilities and residential
communities, because they can significantly reduce energy cost and carbon emission by managing distributed generation
systems to supply load and optimize energy use.
The technologies used in smart microgrids are based on two aspects: power electronics and wireless
communications. All DGS require power converters, PWM techniques and electronic control units.
Wireless communications is essential for exchange of information in smart microgrids, including the system
operation information and the power control information necessary for power inverters control.

International Journal of Computer Networking,
Wireless and Mobile Communications (IJCNWMC)
ISSN(P): 2250-1568; ISSN(E): 2278-9448
Vol. 4, Issue 2, Apr 2014, 11-22
TJPRC Pvt. Ltd.
12 Rajashri R. Narwade & Sonal Gahankari

Impact Factor (JCC): 5.3963 Index Copernicus Value (ICV): 3.0
TYPICAL LOAD SHARING IN SMART MICROGRIDS
A typical load sharing scenario in smart microgrids is shown in Figure 1 where a wireless community mesh
network has been used for control signal exchange. Different households with their own distributed generation systems
(DGSs) share the energy generated across the entire microgrid to supply loads. Because the electric power generated by all
DGSs may be in different forms as DC and AC power, it should be converted into AC power with power inverters before
connecting to the grid.

Figure 1: A typical Application Scenario of Load Sharing in Smart Microgrid
Due to the requirement of system stability, all DGSs outputs have to be synchronized to the same magnitude and
frequency. Therefore, load sharing has been adopted to operate and synchronize the set of parallel DGS power inverters.
So far, the research in literature on load sharing has only been focused on better power control, and most of them assumed
that wireless communication delay among different distributed generation sites is negligible or at a fixed value [2, 3].
However, with the fast development of smart grids, the power control information usually shares the same wireless
communication network along with other system information, meaning that the power control information may be delayed
or even lost during the transmission. There exist several types of delay in the system, including wireless communication
delay, power converters computation delay, and electricity transmission delay. The electricity transmission delay is
negligible in consideration of the high speed of electricity transmission. For the power converters computation delay,
the authors in [2, 4] declared that this type of delay is less than half one PWM cycle and one PWM cycle is 185us.
Compared with the power converters computation delay, the wireless communication delay is much longer, usually
measured in milliseconds. Existing work in the area of load sharing has largely ignored the effect of wireless communication
delay. Actually, all communication networks, especially wireless networks, proposed for smart grid communications, such
as cellular, WiFi / WiMax, Internet, and power line communications, have time-varying communication delay. Based on this
observation, it is crucial to study the parallel power inverters control in smart microgrids by taking into account the effect of
the time-varying communication delay. For the operation stability of parallel inverters in distributed generation systems,
for this a new controller design is proposed based on the Smith predictor to overcome the adverse effect of the time-varying
wireless communication delay.
DGS CIRCUIT MODEL IN A STANDALONE AC POWER SYSTEM
Control strategy for the parallel operation of distributed generation systems (DGS) in a standalone ac power supply
is used. In [2,9] focus is given on proper power sharing of each DGS such as the real power, reactive power, and harmonic
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power in a standalone ac power supply, like the parallel operation of multiple UPS systems. First of all, good load-sharing
should be maintained under both locally measurable voltages/currents and the wire impedance mismatches, voltage/current
measurement error mismatches that significantly degrade the performance of load-sharing. Key features of the control
method are that it only uses locally measurable feedback signals (voltages/currents) and uses relatively low bandwidth data
communication signals (respective real power and reactive power) between each generation system.
To ensure good load-sharing, the scheme combines two control methods: droop control method and average power
control method. In this method, the sharing of real and reactive powers between each DGS is implemented by two
independent control variables: power angle and inverter output voltage amplitude. Especially, the average power method is
used in order to significantly reduce the sensitivity about voltage and current measurement error mismatches. This scheme
guarantees good load-sharing of the fundamental components of the load currents.
DGS circuit model in a standalone ac power system is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: DGS Circuit Model in a Standalone AC Power System
This model consists of two three-phase PWM inverters running in parallel supporting two loads. The power
converter of each DGS studied is a dc/ac voltage source inverter, and each inverter is equipped with an LC output filter and a
star/delta transformer (600 kVA, Np: Ns = 245: 208). In this figure, in order to simplify circuit analysis, generation sources
such as combustion engine, small hydro, photovoltaic arrays, fuel cells, micro turbines or battery energy storage systems,
etc., can be modelled as dc voltage sources (VDC1 and VDC2).
In general, the droop technique [2] has been widely used as a load-sharing scheme in conventional power system
with multiple generators. In this droop method, the generators share the system load by drooping the frequency of each
generator with the real power (P) delivered by the generator. This allows each generator to share changes in total load in a
manner determined by its frequency droop characteristic and essentially utilizes the system frequency as a communication
link between the generator control systems. Similarly, a droop in the voltage amplitude (Vmax) with reactive power (Q) is
used to ensure reactive power sharing. This load sharing technique is based on the power flow theory in an ac system, which
states that the flow of the active power (P) and reactive power (Q) between two sources can be controlled by adjusting the
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Impact Factor (JCC): 5.3963 Index Copernicus Value (ICV): 3.0
power angle and the voltage magnitude of each systemi.e., the active power flow (P) is predominantly controlled by the
power angle, while the reactive power (Q) is predominantly controlled by the voltages magnitude. This theory is explained
in figure 3.

Figure 3: Two Inverters Connected to a Load
Figure 3 indicates critical variables for load-sharing control of paralleled power converters. It shows two inverters
represented by two voltage sources connected to a load through line impedance represented by pure inductances and for
simplified analysis purpose. Then the real power flow is mostly influenced by the power angles 1and 2, while the reactive
power flow predominantly depends on the inverter output voltages E1 and E2.
This means that to certain extent the real and reactive power flow can be controlled independently. Since
controlling the frequencies dynamically controls the power angles, the real power flow control can be equivalently achieved
by controlling the frequencies of the voltages generated by the inverters.
Therefore, as mentioned above, the power angle and the inverter output voltage magnitude are critical variables that
can directly control the real and reactive power flow for proper load sharing of power converters connected in parallel.
Similarly, the above control theory can be applied to parallel operation of distributed energy systems in a
standalone ac power supply application. In general, there is large distance between inverter output and load bus, so each
DGS is required to operate independently as using only locally measurable voltages/currents information. In addition, there
is also long distance between DGS units, so data communication between DGS units may be impractical.
Load Sharing Control of Parallel DGS Inverters
In order to ensure good load sharing of the real power and reactive power among different units, the average power
control method has been widely adopted [2, 3]. In this work, where two three-phase PWM inverters operating in parallel
communicate with each other through a wireless community mesh network is adopted as shown in Figure 4a. In load sharing
control, the power information is feedback from both local and remote inverters to generate the phase angle and magnitude
of reference voltage for the optimal control.
Specifically, the average value of active power information of local and remote power inverters combined with a
constant is used to generate the phase of the reference voltage, and the average value of reactive power information of local
and remote power inverters with a constant is used to generate the magnitude of the reference voltage.
According to the control timing diagram described in [4], the optimal load sharing control requires the power
information from both local and remote inverters, which means that the power information should be sampled and delivered
on time to generate the reference voltage and then the PWM signals. As the power information of remote DGS units is
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transferred over the wireless communication network, there are time delay incurred by information packet or possible
information missing, which means that the reference voltage is generated in error.

Figure 4: (a) Parallel Inverters Control with Power Information Exchange; (b) Signal Transmission Delay Model
Signal Transmission Delay
Since the parallel inverters need to share the power information among them, the timely delivery of power
information of different inverters is important. In this work a delay model of wireless networks to characterize the signal
transmission delay [7] over a lossy wireless communication channel is considered as shown in figure 4 (b).
IMPACT OF WIRELESS COMMUNICATION DELAY ON LOAD SHARING CONTROL
As mentioned earlier, the wireless communication delay will cause the parallel inverters to use outdated power
information to generate the reference voltage for load sharing control. As a result, the reference voltage is expressed as the
relationship of active/reactive power of local and remote inverters. Notice that the power information of remote inverter is
missed. From the previous analysis on load sharing control of parallel DGS inverters, we can observe that the generated
reference voltage will change in both magnitude and phase due to the network transmission delay, indicating that the
outdated power information disables the controller from outputting the optimal power for load sharing.
The controller will work in the suboptimal condition until the remote power information is timely delivered to the
local DGS unit. During this period, the suboptimal output of the local DGS unit may be harmful. Thus, a new controller
needs to be designed to overcome the delay of remote power information and to keep the load sharing system stable.
PROPOSED METHODOLOGY
The delay may result in suboptimal output power information for load sharing. The proposed method involves a
stable controller for parallel power inverters to overcome the impact of the wireless communication delay. The design idea
of this controller is to make the feedback signal from both remote and local inverters arrive at the controller synchronously,
which is realized by delaying the arrival time of the local feedback information.
Because the controller designed is to deal with the delay of feedback signal, the problem is formulated from
transfer matrix of the control setup for operation of parallel inverters having signal transmission delay. To obtain a stable
system output, a possible solution is to maintain uniform delay in all paths. For this a random variable obeying the same
distribution of the wireless communication delay is introduced to the local control loop.
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Impact Factor (JCC): 5.3963 Index Copernicus Value (ICV): 3.0
The random distribution used to generate the random delay can be derived from the wireless communication delay
model. With the introduced delay, the local feedback information will take longer time to arrive the control module.
Using this approach, both local and remote feedback signals will statistically arrive at the controller simultaneously.
The generation of the random delay based on the wireless communication delay model is realized by the power inverter
control module.
A unified smith predictor is a type of predictive controller for systems with pure time delay[8] approach is adopted
in this work to formulate the control design problem and simulation can be performed using matlab /simulink software.
Block Diagram for Proposed System

Figure 5: Equivalent Representation of the Proposed Load Sharing Controller
Flow Diagram of Proposed System

Figure 6: Flow Diagram of Proposed System
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Input & Output Details
Input: Two DGS units, two loads, and the wireless communication delay.
Constants: Ts=185us, Ac load voltage 480V, PWM Frequency 5.4 KHz
Output: Graph of Active Power and Output Voltage
The nominal values of the circuit components for simulations are as follows:
Rated output power of each DGS System = 600KVA
AC Load voltage = 480V (rms)
Delta/star transformer = 600 KVA, 980V/480V, 60Hz
Vdc=2200 Vac , PWM Frequency = 5.4 kHz
Ts (sampling period) =185s
Td (delay time) = Ts/2
Lf= 5 m H, Cf =300F
These values are taken from ref paper [2]
Simulink Model for Proposed Method
Simulink Model Description
By considering output from renewable energy source is analog, we take 3 phase source as input a 25 KV.
Winding connection from 3 phase source is connected by Y shape (input of transformer) and output terminals are connected
in delta (D1) shape to rectifier. Transformer is used for connecting input source to system that we proposed. Output of
transformer is 480V, 600 KVA
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Impact Factor (JCC): 5.3963 Index Copernicus Value (ICV): 3.0


Figure 7: Simulink Model for Proposed Method
Rectifier converts ac signal from transformer to dc output signal. Output is given to LC tune circuit which is work
as a filter. PWM IGBT is an inverter, so output is ac from this block. This block can be operating at variable frequency and
voltage. These inverters are capable of producing ac voltages of variable magnitude as well as variable frequency.
The quality of output voltage can also be greatly enhanced. There are several different PWM techniques, differing in their
methods of implementation. However in these technique the aim is to generate an output voltage, which after some
filtering, would result in a good quality sinusoidal voltage waveform of desired fundamental frequency and magnitude.
For the inverter topology considered here, it may not be possible to reduce the overall voltage distortion due to harmonics
but by proper switching control the magnitudes of lower order harmonic voltages can be reduced, often at the cost of
increasing the magnitudes of higher order harmonic voltages. Such a situation is acceptable in most cases as the harmonic
voltages of higher frequencies can be satisfactorily filtered using lower sizes of filter chokes and capacitors. Many of the
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loads, like motor loads have an inherent quality to suppress high frequency harmonic currents and hence an external filter
may not be necessary.
Snubber resistance in block is use to reduce distortion in signals, because in high power application low distorted
ac output is required. At the output we get voltage and frequency. Frequency is around 2 KHz which is very high to our
system, this is reduced by filtering. So here low pass LC filter is used to tune at particular 50 Hz frequency.
F = 1/(LC)^0.5
The first output of the voltage regulator is a vector containing the three modulating signals used by the PMW
Generator to generate the 6 IGBT pulses RLC load is connected to tune output at 50 Hz and 380 Vrms. As expected the
peak value of the load voltage is 537 V (380 Vrms). In steady state, the mean value of the modulation index is m = 0.80
and the mean value of the DC voltage is 778 V. The fundamental component of 50 Hz voltage buried in the chopped
inverter voltage is therefore: Vab = 778 V * 0.612 * 0.80 = 381 V rms.
Voltage regulator is used to regulate voltage at fixed point. Here we want 380 Vrms as an output. So voltage
regulator block is connected. This block is used on basic of PID controller. Output of voltage regulator is related to output
of PID.
For these ADC to DC converter is used. We give input as ADC and at output we get DC transformation
Thus constant output of 380Vrms is given to Discrete PWM Generator with sample time 2ms, which is feedback
to PWM IGBT block by unit delay. Here carrier frequency is constant i.e. 5.4 KHz. Thus at end we get output of 380
Vrms, 50 Hz.
This output converted to dc by ADC for smith predictor. This dc output is pwm waveform. On this output delay is
applied. We use Smith predictor to overcome the adverse effect of the time-varying wireless communication delay. Delay
is given of 185 us to the system. That means these delay applied before smith predictor to overcome the adverse effect of
the time-varying wireless communication delay. Smith predictor is nothing but PID with Kp = 1, Ki = 1, Kd = 0
Continuous-time PID controller in parallel form.
LPF is applied after smith predictor, which remove unwanted signals from dc output. And filtered output is given
to DAC. For load we have to use ac voltage so that we again convert it into ac by DAC block. Because of LPF voltage is
reduced because high frequency components are filtered from this block.
So at the end we get 120 Vpp voltage i.e. 240 V. this voltage is used for load through grids. For calculating power
we use V^2/R where R=30. At the end power loss is less.







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Impact Factor (JCC): 5.3963 Index Copernicus Value (ICV): 3.0
RESULTS
Outputs
Load Voltage

Figure 8
The peak value of the load voltage is 537V (380Vrms)
DC Voltage

Figure 9
The dc output is connected to is PWM waveform
Ouput Load Voltage

Figure 10
So at the end 120Vpp voltage i.e 240Vis obtained. This voltage is used for load through grids.
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Output Power

Figure 11
At the end power loss is less
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