Hardware in the Loop implementation of a disturbance based control in MVDC grids

This paper presents the Hardware in the Loop (HiL) validation of a control method to regulate the voltage of the DC Bus fed by Distributed Generation (DG) units in an islanded MVDC microgrid. The disturbance based control, employs a decentralized Linear Quadratic Gaussian (LQG) control of individual generator side converters to be executed locally, and which does not need remote measurements of loads and sources in its control scheme. This enables “plug-and-play” capabilities. The virtual disturbance model permits changes in the reference voltage and the variation in the load parameters based on local knowledge without the need of a communication infrastructure. The testing is performed via HiL implementation with Real Time Digital Simulator (RTDS). HiL Simulations show that this method can handle switching noise, ripple and other effects that are not present in averaged models.