International Conference on Advances in Electrical, Electronics, Information, Communication and Bio-Informatics (AEEICB16)
Control of Parallel DC-DC Converters in a DC
Microgrid Using Virtual Output Impedance Method
Vinu Thomas1, Student Member, IEEE, Kumaravel S.2, Member, IEEE and Ashok S.3, Senior Member, IEEE
1
PhD Scholar, 2Assistant Professor, 3Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Calicut
(e-mail: vinu5757@gmail.com, kumaravel_s@nitc.ac.in, ashoks@nitc.ac.in)
Abstract Microgrid allows flexible integration of distributed
generation using renewable energy sources into the conventional
centralized power system with the additional benefit of islanded
mode operation Research efforts on DC microgrids have gained
momentum in the recent years, mainly due to its inherent
advantages compared to AC microgrids. Several DC renewable
energy sources are connected to a common DC bus in a DC
microgrid using DC-DC converters. When converters of different
ratings are connected in parallel, it is required that the load
demand is shared by the converters proportional to their power
ratings. This will ensure that individual converters are not
overstressed and the connected load is optimally shared. This
paper investigates a droop control strategy for parallel DC-DC
converters using virtual output impedance method for optimum
load sharing. Simulation of the control strategy has been done for
two parallel connected buck converters and the results show the
optimum load sharing between the two converters.
KeywordsMicrogrid; DC microgrid; droop control; virtual
output impedance
I. INTRODUCTION
A microgrid is an active power distribution network, which
has the capability of autonomous operation. The essential
components of a microgrid are distributed generators (DG),
energy storage elements and controllable loads [1, 2]. The
unique advantage of a microgrid is its ability to operate both in
grid connected and islanded( or autonomous) mode.
Microgrids can be classified as AC microgrids and DC
microgrids depending on the nature of bus voltage [3]. In an
AC microgrid, the distributed generators are connected to the
AC bus using power electronic converters and the alternating
current (AC) loads are directly connected to the AC bus. AC
microgrids are more popular compared to DC microgrids since
the existing power distribution networks are predominantly
AC based. In AC microgrids, the power produced by the
renewable energy sources is fed to the grid after synchronizing
the voltage with the grid voltage to operate in grid connected
mode. Also in islanded mode, the control of the DG's, loads
and energy storage equipments to maintain a stable voltage is
very complicated.
Recently a lot of research work is being done on DC
microgrids, since DC microgrids has several advantages over
AC microgrids. Since the many of the renewable energy
sources like solar photovoltaic panels and fuel cells produce
DC power and many of the existing loads like computers,
servers, LED lamps and electric vehicles work on DC power,
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DC microgrid presents itself as a more feasible alternative
over AC microgrid.
The potential merits of DC microgrid over AC microgrids
are given below [4]:
Overall efficiency is improved as the unnecessary
AC/DC power conversions are reduced
Simple and cost effective power electronics interfaces
to connect the sources and loads to the microgrid bus
No issues of reactive power flow
Easier integration of energy storage devices
The remaining portions of this paper are organized as
follows. The basic concepts of the DC microgrid architecture
are discussed in Section II. The fundamental theory of
converters connected in parallel and droop control is dealt in
Section III. Section IV is about the results obtained with the
conventional droop control strategy. Section V discusses the
proposed improvements in the conventional control strategy.
The results obtained with the simulation of the proposed
improvements are provided in Section VI. Section VII
concludes the research paper with the discussion of the results
obtained.
II. DC MICROGRID ARCHITECTURE
There are different configurations of DC microgrid
architectures out of which a suitable one is selected based on
the application [5]. The general architecture of a DC microgrid
is shown in Fig. 1. In a DC microgrid all the distributed
generators are connected to a common DC bus using power
electronic converters. The energy storage equipments like
battery or ultra-capacitor are connected using DC-DC
converters to the common DC bus. The DC and AC loads are
connected to the DC bus using power electronic converters. A
transformer and a bidirectional AC-DC converter acts as the
interface between the DC bus and the utility grid.
A static switch is connected between the grid and the
microgrid at the point of common coupling (PCC). In case of
any fault in the grid, the static switch isolates the microgrid
from the main grid. In such a case the microgrid operates in
the islanded mode. In grid connected mode, the bidirectional
AC-DC converter acts as the interface between the DC bus of
the microgrid and the utility grid. The loads connected to the
DC bus may be operating at the same voltage level as the bus
voltage or at a lower voltage level. A buck converter is used to
 International Conference on Advances in Electrical, Electronics, Information, Communication and Bio-Informatics (AEEICB16)
step down the voltage if the load is designed to operate at a
lower voltage level.
Fig. 1. DC microgrid architecture
III. CONTROL STRATEGY
In a DC microgrid, the distributed generators are
connected in parallel to the common DC bus using DC-DC
converters. A hierarchical control strategy is adopted [6] to
control the distributed generators. It consists of three levels of
control - primary, secondary and tertiary levels. The objective
of primary control is to ensure proper load sharing among the
DG's. The objective of the secondary control level is to
regulate the voltage deviations and the tertiary control level
regulates the flow of power between the grid and microgrid.
The common loads connected to the DC bus need to be
shared among the DG's in proportion to their power ratings
and any individual DG should not be overburdened. This
should be done with minimum communication requirements
between the DG's, to ensure higher reliability.
Droop control is a popular decentralised control method
used to share load between parallel connected sources. The
advantage of droop control for parallel connected sources is
that it does not require any sort of communication between the
sources. Although droop control for AC microgrids is a widely
researched topic, droop control for DC systems has not
received much attention.
A droop control method for DC systems has been proposed
in [7]. While in AC generators the frequency versus output
power is given a drooping characteristics, For the droop
control of parallel DC-DC converters, the output voltage of
the converter is given a droop with increase in load power.
Fig. 2 depicts the droop control (P-V droop) applied to DC
microgrids with two converters connected in parallel. P1max
and P2max are the converter ratings of the two converters
connected to the DC bus. Since P1max < P2max, the slope(droop
gain) of the voltage of converter 1 is greater than that of
converter 2. At any particular voltage V*, the power shared by
converter 1 is P1* and that of converter 2 is P 2*. The total load
is the sum of P1* and P2*.
978-1-4673-9745-2 2016 IEEE
Fig. 2. P-V droop characteristics
From Fig. 2, it is evident that the total load is shared by
the two converters in proportion to their power ratings. But as
evident from the figure itself the voltage regulation is
adversely affected by the droop control. As the load increases
the terminal voltage reduces. The slope of the droop
characteristics is designed keeping in mind the maximum
permissible value of voltage regulation.
The cable resistance between the source and the point of
common coupling has a negative effect on voltage regulation
and the power sharing among the loads. The fig. 3 shows the
voltage - P droop characteristics for cable resistances of 0.1
and 0.2. The converter with higher cable resistance has poor
voltage regulation while the converter with lower cable
resistance has better regulation. Obviously the load sharing
will be better in case of less cable resistance.
Fig. 3. Effect of cable resistance on P-V droop characteristics
The effect of the droop gain on the power or current
sharing can be understood using the Fig. 2. Assume that the
two sources are droop controlled with a droop gain. When the
droop gain used is higher, it is found that the current sharing
error of the converters reduces. But the voltage regulation was
found to increase. High values of droop gains provide a
stabilizing effect on the DC microgrid [8]. But it also increases
the losses in the system [9]. So a trade-off is required is
required in selecting the droop gain as a small value and a
higher value can adversely affect the system.
Droop control of sources in DC microgrid using resistive
virtual output impedance is discussed in [10]. This paper
discusses a primary control strategy of parallel DC-DC
converters in a DC microgrid. Droop control using virtual
 International Conference on Advances in Electrical, Electronics, Information, Communication and Bio-Informatics (AEEICB16)

output impedance method is used as the primary control where D is the duty ratio and Vo is the peak to peak ripple
strategy in this paper. in output voltage and Vo is the reference output voltage.
A. Droop control using virtual output impedance
When two DC-DC converters are connected in parallel,
they should have same nominal output voltage. The equivalent
circuit of two parallel connected dc power supplies connected
to a common load through resistive output impedances in
shown in Fig. 4. It is essential that the nominal output voltages
of the parallel connected DC-DC converters are the same.
Although the nominal output voltages of two converters are
the same, there may be difference in the parameters of the two Fig. 4. Equivalent circuit of two parallel DC sources
converters. Also if the two converters are at different locations
the output resistance of each converter may not be the same.
In case of minor voltage difference between the dc sources, a
circulating current flows between the sources. A virtual output
impedance is programmed to reduce this circulating current.
This adjusts the reference voltage given to the inner voltage
and current loops.
The control input to the voltage loop is expressed as:
= (1)
where is the measured output current, is the virtual
output impedance, is the no load output reference
voltage. If is the maximum allowed voltage deviation,
and is given by:

= (2)
2
Fig. 5. Parallel DC-DC converter control scheme using virtual output
= / (3) impedance method
where is the nominal output voltage and is the
TABLE I. SIMULATION PARAMETERS
maximum output current.
This virtual output impedance control loop compensates Parameter Value
for difference in voltage reference = 1
2 . The Switching frequency, f 40 kHz
current sharing between the two converters can be expressed
as: Inductor, L 1.1 mH

= 1 2 = (4)
Fig. 5 shows the block diagram of the
proposed control strategy. The DC source consists of one or
more switches which are driven by a PWM block. The control
scheme consists of two inner loops of current and voltage
control and an outer loop for virtual output impedance droop.
This method allows the load sharing in parallel converters and
improves the dynamic performance of the output voltage. But
the voltage deviations caused due to loads is a disadvantage of
this method.
IV. SIMULATION
The simulation has been done in MATLAB/Simulink for
two parallel connected buck converters. The parameters used
for the simulation are given in Table I (Case 1). The design
equations of the buck converter are given below.
1 connected in parallel with different values of output resistance.
= 1.25 (5)
2
(1)
= (6)
8 2 ( )
Capacitor, C 10 F
Load resistance, RL 100
Buck converter 1, output resistance R 0.5
Buck converter 2, output resistance R 0.7
Kp 1
Ki 10
The nominal input voltage to the buck converters is 380V
and the nominal output voltage is 120 V. The virtual output
impedance value of 8 was used for the simulation. The
proposed control strategy was activated at 0.5 s and there is a
sudden increase of load at 0.8 s. The load resistance value
changes from 100 to 80 at that instant.
For the simulation, two identical buck converters are
The design parameters used to design the control scheme is
given in Table II. The maximum allowed voltage deviation is
taken as 5% of the output voltage.

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 International Conference on Advances in Electrical, Electronics, Information, Communication and Bio-Informatics (AEEICB16)
TABLE II. DESIGN PARAMETERS
Parameter Value
Reference output voltage, Vo 120 V
Virtual output impedance, RD 8 the output resistance of buck converter 1 as 0.5 and that of
6V
0.75 A
Fig. 6. Output voltage and currents of buck converters (RD = 8 ), Case 1
V. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
The output voltage waveform and the output current
waveforms of both converters were plotted (Fig. 6). The
output voltage waveform has a drooping characteristic when
the proposed control strategy is activated.
From the current waveforms of the buck converters it is
observed that unequal currents were supplied by each
converter till the virtual output impedance control is activated
at 0.5 s. Before 0.5 s, the output current of buck converter 1
was higher since its output resistance is less than that of buck
converter 2. So the power delivered by buck converter 1 was
greater than that of buck converter 2. The difference in
currents supplied by the two converters was large till 0.5s.
After this instant the difference in current supplied is reduced
to a considerable extent. Therefore it has succeeded in equal
load sharing since the converters used in the simulation are of
same ratings. Even though there is a sudden increase in load at
0.8 s, it has succeeded in maintaining the optimum load
sharing.
The effect of the value of virtual output impedance on the
load sharing was also investigated by simulation. It was found
that with a higher value of virtual output impedance, the load
sharing has improved. The current sharing error between the
two converters was found to have reduced. But the voltage
deviation or droop will be more in this case. For a smaller
978-1-4673-9745-2 2016 IEEE
value of virtual output impedance, the voltage deviation is less
and the current sharing error is higher.
To analyze the effect of output resistance on the current
sharing and voltage regulation, the simulation was done with
buck converter 2 as 1 (Case 2). The output voltage
waveform and the output current waveforms of both
converters were plotted in Fig. 7. The current sharing error
and voltage regulation have deteriorated in this case.
Fig. 7. Output voltage and currents of buck converters (RD = 8 ), Case 2
VI. CONCLUSION
When converters are connected in parallel, they need to
share the load in proportion to their power ratings. Droop
control using virtual output impedance method is an effective
method to ensure the optimum load sharing between parallel
DC-DC converters in a DC microgrid. Since the output
voltage of each converter is adjusted by measuring the output
current, the terminal voltage itself provides information
regarding the power delivered. Therefore the advantage of this
method is that there is no requirement of a separate
communication link between the converters. Since this method
being a decentralised method without any communication
link, the reliability is higher compared to centralised control
methods. However the voltage deviation caused due to the
primary control needs to be adjusted by a secondary level of
control which needs to be addressed separately. Also a tertiary
control is required to adjust the power flow from the DC
microgrid to the utility grid.
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