Droop-control-based state-of-charge balancing method for charging and discharging process in autonomous DC microgrids

In this paper, a droop control based state-of-charge (SoC) balancing method in autonomous DC microgrids is proposed. Both charging and discharging process have been considered. In particular, in the charging process, the droop coefficient is set to be proportional to SoCⁿ, and in the discharging process, the droop coefficient is set to be inversely proportional to SoCⁿ. Since the injected/output power is in inverse-proportion to the droop coefficient, with the proposed method, the energy storage unit (ESU) with higher SoC absorbs less power in the charging process and delivers more power in the discharging process. Meanwhile, the ESU with lower SoC absorbs more power in the charging process and delivers less power in the discharging process. Eventually, the SoC and injected/output power in each ESU are equalized. The exponent n for SoC is employed to regulate the balancing speed of the SoC and injected/output power. It is demonstrated that with higher exponent n, the balancing speed is higher. Simulation model comprised of three ESUs is implemented by using MATLAB/Simulink. The proposed method is verified by the simulation results.