To identify the influence of communication constraints on the reliability and stability operation of heterogenous microgrids, this survey presents a comprehensive review and comparison of cyber-enabled distributed control techniques for microgrid's secondary control layer. Local controls of an unavailable state signal are calculated in a distributed and cooperative matter according to merely invoked cyber messages. Then, the recent developments in the communication constraints of distributed controlled microgrids are discussed. Specifically, the communication constraints (e.g., time-varying network topology, communication delay, noise disturbance, limited communication bandwidth, uncertainties of communication links) on the operation of the distributed controllers and the possible challenges are presented and compared. Finally, a short discussion section is contained to summarize the existing research and suggest some interesting research directions along with several open issues that are critical to further exploring the promising research area. © 2021 IEEE.

This paper develops a distributed anti-disturbance control scheme that can achieve current sharing of distributed generations (DG) and voltage restoration of DC bus in mean square subject to multiplicative noises and time delays over fading networks. Since the cyber channels are exposed to inherent multiplicative noises and time delays, the information exchange among multiple and cooperative DGs may be disturbed in fading communication networks, where fading may either be due to noises, delays, and shadowing from obstacles affecting the wave propagation. As a results, fading makes every DG receives incomplete/imprecise information from its neighbors. To dispel the adverse influences of noises and time delays over fading networks, a washout filter-based distributed noise-resiliency control algorithm is developed for DC microgrids, in which only the current state variable is exchanged among DGs with the local decentralized voltage controller. By introducing stochastic theory and Lyapunov stability function, the criteria for the stability analysis and delays boundedness considering noise interferences is derived to ensure the stability operation of the whole closed-loop DC network. The obtained results show the effectiveness of the proposed strategy by a tested DC microgrid in OPAL-RT real-time simulator. © 2021 IEEE.

This paper develops a distributed anti-disturbance control scheme that can achieve current sharing of distributed generations (DG) and voltage restoration of DC bus in mean square subject to multiplicative noises and time delays over fading networks. Since the cyber channels are exposed to inherent multiplicative noises and time delays, the information exchange among multiple and cooperative DGs may be disturbed in fading communication networks, where fading may either be due to noises, delays, and shadowing from obstacles affecting the wave propagation. As a results, fading makes every DG receives incomplete/imprecise information from its neighbors. To dispel the adverse influences of noises and time delays over fading networks, a washout filter-based distributed noise-resiliency control algorithm is developed for DC microgrids, in which only the current state variable is exchanged among DGs with the local decentralized voltage controller. By introducing stochastic theory and Lyapunov stability function, the criteria for the stability analysis and delays boundedness considering noise interferences is derived to ensure the stability operation of the whole closed-loop DC network. The obtained results show the effectiveness of the proposed strategy by a tested DC microgrid in OPAL-RT real-time simulator. © 2021 IEEE.

In this paper, a resilient distributed bilevel cooperation control scheme is developed for heterogeneous microgrid clusters with multiplicative noises, which are relative state- dependent measurement noises. The specific objective is to regulate power flow among heterogeneous microgrids to achieve load sharing by employing a sparse communication network with multiplicative noises, thus the proposed distributed control method allows higher reliability and flexibility operation. For efficient coordination of heterogeneous microgrids, a resilient distributed consensus control protocol with shared communication framework and considering measurement noise disturbances is considered. Then the closed-loop stability analysis of the whole system is carried out, accordingly we derive the sufficient conditions to achieve load sharing among all heterogeneous microgrids in almost surely. Moreover, the control gains have been designed to guarantee the convergence. With the proposed scheme, loading sharing among the interconnected microgrids can be achieved proportionally even if the multiplicative noises exist. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy against communication noises effect is verified under various scenarios obtained from OPAL-RT real-time simulator by a modified heterogeneous microgrid cluster test network. © 2020 IEEE.

This article presents a novel distributed event-driven control strategy that will dispatch and share the active and reactive power outputs of massive current-controlled voltage source inverter (CCVSI)-based distributed generators (DGs) in an ac microgird. The proposed distributed power sharing control strategy is fully distributed and only driven at their own event time, which effectively reduces the frequency of controller updates compared with continuous-time feedback control. Moreover, each CCVSI-based DG only requires the local voltage and current measurement from its own and some nearest neighbors (but not all) for the distributed power sharing control at the last event-driven time by using low-bandwidth communication links and then, updates the control inputs to restore the active and reactive powers to desired values for further reducing the consumption of computing and communication resources to some extent. The Lyapunov technique is employed to derive the stability and convergence analysis of the proposed dynamic event-driven conditions. The effectiveness of the proposed control strategy is verified under various scenarios by a modified IEEE 34-bus test network in MATLAB/SimPowerSystems.

This article presents a novel distributed event-driven control strategy that will dispatch and share the active and reactive power outputs of massive current-controlled voltage source inverter (CCVSI)-based distributed generators (DGs) in an ac microgird. The proposed distributed power sharing control strategy is fully distributed and only driven at their own event time, which effectively reduces the frequency of controller updates compared with continuous-time feedback control. Moreover, each CCVSI-based DG only requires the local voltage and current measurement from its own and some nearest neighbors (but not all) for the distributed power sharing control at the last event-driven time by using low-bandwidth communication links and then, updates the control inputs to restore the active and reactive powers to desired values for further reducing the consumption of computing and communication resources to some extent. The Lyapunov technique is employed to derive the stability and convergence analysis of the proposed dynamic event-driven conditions. The effectiveness of the proposed control strategy is verified under various scenarios by a modified IEEE 34-bus test network in MATLAB/SimPowerSystems.

Enabling energy exchange among multiple dc microgrids (MGs) and adjusting the current outputs of all converters proportional to their power capacities can significantly improve power supply reliability as well as effectively avoid overloaded or uncertainty. By dividing all converters within each dc MG cluster into the leader-converters and follower-converters according to their physical cluster topology structure, the leader and follower control layers are respectively formulated. Then a droop-based two-layer cooperative strategy is developed, under which the weighted average voltage of all converters can be regulated to their rated references, meanwhile, the accurate current sharing can be simultaneously realized not only within each dc MG but also among multiple dc MG clusters. All controllers are fully distributed and can be applied in all sparse two-layer cyber networks, control time constant related sufficient conditions are also derived to ensure the whole system stability. The effectiveness of the results are verified through different cases in MATLAB/SimPowerSystems. Copyright © 2020 The Authors. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0)