Hierarchical Hybrid Control and Communication Topology Optimization in DC Microgrids for Enhanced Performance

Abstract

Bus voltage regulation and accurate power sharing constitute two pivotal control objectives in DC microgrids. The conventional droop control method inherently suffers from steady-state voltage deviation. Centralized control introduces vulnerability to single-point failures, with significantly degraded stability under abnormal operating conditions. Distributed control strategies mitigate this vulnerability but require careful balancing between control effectiveness and communication costs. Therefore, this paper proposes a hybrid hierarchical control architecture integrating multiple control strategies to achieve near-zero steady-state deviation voltage regulation and precise power sharing in DC microgrids. Capitalizing on the complementary advantages of different control methods, an operation-condition-adaptive hierarchical control (OCAHC) strategy is proposed. The proposed method improves reliability over centralized control under communication failures, and achieves better performance than distributed control under normal conditions. With a fault-detection logic module, the OCAHC framework enables automatic switching to maintain high control performance across different operating scenarios. For the inherent trade-off between consensus algorithm performance and communication costs, a communication topology optimization model is established with communication cost as the objective, subject to constraints including communication intensity, algorithm convergence under both normal and N-1 conditions, and control performance requirements. An accelerated optimization approach employing node-degree computation and equivalent topology reduction is proposed to enhance computational efficiency. Finally, case studies on a DC microgrid with five DGs verify the effectiveness of the proposed model and methods.