Autonomous and decentralized load sharing and energy management approach for DC microgrids

Abstract Appropriate power sharing and energy management in DC microgrids for the optimal, reliable and efficient operation of renewable energies and storages are of high importance. Droop-based control methods have been presented for power sharing among DC sources, while the energy management approaches employ communication systems to monitor the demand, renewable generations and energy level of storage units in order to properly operate the energy sources. Employing communication systems may affect the system reliability and introduce infrastructure costs. Moreover, extending energy sources require modifying the energy management system. This paper proposes an autonomous and decentralized power sharing and energy management approach for DC microgrids without utilizing a communication system. Hence, it can be a reliable and economical solution for operation of DC microgrids. Furthermore, in the proposed approach, the energy sources can operate independently by using the local information, and hence, it introduces plug-and-play capability for extending the energy sources. The viability and effectiveness of the proposed approach are evaluated by simulations and validated by experiments.