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Distributed Secondary Control with Consensus-Based Adaptive Droop and Voltage Observer for DC Microgrids
Corresponding Author(s) : Arif Nur Afandi
Kinetik: Game Technology, Information System, Computer Network, Computing, Electronics, and Control,
Vol. 11, No. 2, May 2026
Abstract
This paper proposes a fully distributed secondary control scheme for a low-voltage DC microgrid with ring topology. The main objectives are to restore the common bus voltage to its nominal reference and to achieve accurate proportional current sharing among distributed generator units in the presence of non-uniform line resistances and mixed load conditions. The proposed secondary layer integrates a consensus-based adaptive droop controller and a consensus-based voltage observer. The adaptive droop mechanism dynamically adjusts the virtual impedance of each converter using neighbor-to-neighbor current information to reduce current-sharing errors, while the voltage observer provides a distributed estimate of the average bus voltage to compensate for droop-induced voltage deviations. The effectiveness of the proposed method is validated through simulation on a ring-configured DC microgrid consisting of four converters and five buses. A comparative study demonstrates that conventional droop control improves current sharing but introduces significant steady-state voltage deviation. By contrast, the proposed integrated approach achieves nearly zero current-sharing error while maintaining the DC bus voltage close to its reference value. The dynamic performance is further evaluated under both resistive-load and constant-power-load variations. The results show that the controller ensures fast voltage restoration, accurate proportional current sharing, and stable operation without sustained oscillations, even under nonlinear constant-power-load conditions. These findings indicate that the proposed distributed secondary control strategy provides robust voltage regulation and precise current sharing for ring-type DC microgrids.
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- H. Saeidi, N. Mahdian Dehkordi, and H. Karimi, “Dynamic Threshold-Based Event-Triggered Strategy for Robust Fully Distributed Control in Renewable-Powered DC Microgrids,” IEEE Trans. Consum. Electron., vol. 71, no. 4, pp. 9689–9701, Nov. 2025. https://doi.org/10.1109/TCE.2025.3599935
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References
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S. Liu, H. Miao, J. Li, and L. Yang, “Voltage control and power sharing in DC Microgrids based on voltage-shifting and droop slope-adjusting strategy,” Electr. Power Syst. Res., vol. 214, p. 108814, Jan. 2023. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsr.2022.108814
P. S. Tadepalli, D. Pullaguram, and M. N. Alam, “DC Microgrid Average Voltage Regulation and Current Sharing With Solely Current Communication,” IEEE J. Emerg. Sel. Top. Ind. Electron., vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 457–463, Apr. 2025. https://doi.org/10.1109/JESTIE.2024.3507088
W. W. A. G. Silva, T. R. Oliveira, and P. F. Donoso-Garcia, “An Improved Voltage-Shifting Strategy to Attain Concomitant Accurate Power Sharing and Voltage Restoration in Droop-Controlled DC Microgrids,” IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 36, no. 2, pp. 2396–2406, Feb. 2021. https://doi.org/10.1109/TPEL.2020.3009619
G. Yang, L. Ding, M. Ye, S. Xiao, and D. Yue, “Distributed Accurate Current Sharing for Multi-Bus DC Microgrids With Minimizing Voltage Regulation Deviations: A Game-Theoretic Approach,” IEEE Trans. Smart Grid, vol. 16, no. 4, pp. 2725–2737, Jul. 2025. https://doi.org/10.1109/TSG.2025.3553828
S. Chaturvedi, D. Fulwani, and D. Patel, “Dynamic Virtual Impedance-Based Second-Order Ripple Regulation in DC Microgrids,” IEEE J. Emerg. Sel. Top. Power Electron., vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 1075–1083, Feb. 2022. https://doi.org/10.1109/JESTPE.2021.3076474
B. Fan, J. Peng, Q. Yang, and W. Liu, “Distributed Control of DC Microgrids With Improved ZIP Load Adaptability,” IEEE Trans. Syst. Man Cybern. Syst., vol. 52, no. 7, pp. 4623–4633, Jul. 2022. https://doi.org/10.1109/TSMC.2021.3101813
Z. Liu, L. Xing, J. Fang, Z. Shu, and H. Su, “Distributed Secondary Control for DC Microgrids With Near-Infinite Constant Power Load Accommodation,” IEEE Trans. Smart Grid, vol. 16, no. 6, pp. 4451–4462, Nov. 2025. https://doi.org/10.1109/TSG.2025.3605924
J. Peng, B. Fan, H. Xu, and W. Liu, “Discrete-Time Self-Triggered Control of DC Microgrids With Data Dropouts and Communication Delays,” IEEE Trans. Smart Grid, vol. 11, no. 6, pp. 4626–4636, Nov. 2020. https://doi.org/10.1109/TSG.2020.3000138
J. Peng, B. Fan, Q. Yang, and W. Liu, “Distributed Event-Triggered Control of DC Microgrids,” IEEE Syst. J., vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 2504–2514, Jun. 2021. https://doi.org/10.1109/JSYST.2020.2994532
F. Guo, Z. Huang, L. Wang, and Y. Wang, “Distributed event-triggered voltage restoration and optimal power sharing control for an islanded DC microgrid,” Int. J. Electr. Power Energy Syst., vol. 153, p. 109308, Nov. 2023. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijepes.2023.109308
H. Guo, X. Dai, S. Bu, and Z. Zhang, “Distributed Secondary Control of DC Microgrids Under Unreliable Communication Networks,” IEEE Trans. Autom. Sci. Eng., vol. 22, pp. 22900–22911, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1109/TASE.2025.3624598
S. Chang, C. Wang, X. Luo, and X. Guan, “Distributed predefined-time secondary control under directed networks for DC microgrids,” Appl. Energy, vol. 374, p. 123993, Nov. 2024. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2024.123993
P. Wang, R. Huang, M. Zaery, W. Wang, and D. Xu, “A Fully Distributed Fixed-Time Secondary Controller for DC Microgrids,” IEEE Trans. Ind. Appl., vol. 56, no. 6, pp. 6586–6597, Nov. 2020. https://doi.org/10.1109/TIA.2020.3016284
L. Xing, Z. Shu, J. Fang, C. Wen, and C. Zhang, “Distributed control of DC microgrids: A relaxed upper bound for constant power loads,” Automatica, vol. 173, p. 112021, Mar. 2025. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.automatica.2024.112021
Z. Liu and J. Li, “Robust Stability of DC Microgrid Under Distributed Control,” IEEE Access, vol. 10, pp. 97888–97896, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2022.3205615
Z. Liu, J. Li, M. Su, X. Liu, and L. Yuan, “Stability Analysis of Equilibrium of DC Microgrid Under Distributed Control,” IEEE Trans. Power Syst., vol. 39, no. 1, pp. 1058–1067, Jan. 2024. https://doi.org/10.1109/TPWRS.2023.3266244
Z. Fan, B. Fan, and W. Liu, “Distributed Control of DC Microgrids for Optimal Coordination of Conventional and Renewable Generators,” IEEE Trans. Smart Grid, vol. 12, no. 6, pp. 4607–4615, Nov. 2021. https://doi.org/10.1109/TSG.2021.3094878
B. Zhang, F. Gao, D. Liao, D. Liu, and P. W. Wheeler, “A Dynamic Diffusion Algorithm for Discrete-Time Cooperative Control for DC Microgrids,” IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 39, no. 8, pp. 9399–9414, Aug. 2024. https://doi.org/10.1109/TPEL.2024.3395998
N. Zhang, D. Yang, H. Zhang, and Y. Luo, “Distributed control strategy of DC microgrid based on consistency theory,” Energy Rep., vol. 8, pp. 739–750, Nov. 2022. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.egyr.2022.05.189
Y. Jiang, Y. Yang, S.-C. Tan, and S. Y. R. Hui, “A High-Order Differentiator Based Distributed Secondary Control for DC Microgrids Against False Data Injection Attacks,” IEEE Trans. Smart Grid, vol. 13, no. 5, pp. 4035–4045, Sep. 2022. https://doi.org/10.1109/TSG.2021.3135904
F. Li et al., “Distributed secondary control for DC microgrids using two-stage multi-agent reinforcement learning,” Int. J. Electr. Power Energy Syst., vol. 164, p. 110335, Mar. 2025. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijepes.2024.110335
Y.-W. Wang, Y. Zhang, X.-K. Liu, and X. Chen, “Distributed Predefined-Time Optimization and Control for Multi-Bus DC Microgrid,” IEEE Trans. Power Syst., vol. 39, no. 4, pp. 5769–5779, Jul. 2024. https://doi.org/10.1109/TPWRS.2023.3349165
Z. Fan, B. Fan, J. Peng, and W. Liu, “Operation Loss Minimization Targeted Distributed Optimal Control of DC Microgrids,” IEEE Syst. J., vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 5186–5196, Dec. 2021. https://doi.org/10.1109/JSYST.2020.3035059
H. Saeidi, N. Mahdian Dehkordi, and H. Karimi, “Dynamic Threshold-Based Event-Triggered Strategy for Robust Fully Distributed Control in Renewable-Powered DC Microgrids,” IEEE Trans. Consum. Electron., vol. 71, no. 4, pp. 9689–9701, Nov. 2025. https://doi.org/10.1109/TCE.2025.3599935
J. Lee and J. Back, “Distributed Robust Secondary Controller for Voltage Balancing and Proportional Load Sharing in Uncertain DC Microgrids,” IEEE Access, vol. 12, pp. 91011–91024, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2024.3409740