IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SMART GRID, VOL. 5, NO.

2, MARCH 2014 683

Hierarchical Control of Parallel AC-DC Converter

Interfaces for Hybrid Microgrids
Xiaonan Lu, Student Member, IEEE, Josep M. Guerrero, Senior Member, IEEE, Kai Sun, Member, IEEE,
Juan C. Vasquez, Member, IEEE, Remus Teodorescu, Fellow, IEEE, and Lipei Huang

Abstract—In this paper, a hierarchical control system for the proper interaction between ac and dc buses in hybrid micro-
parallel power electronics interfaces between ac bus and dc grids.
bus in a hybrid microgrid is presented. Both standalone and Since the distributed renewable energy sources can be con-
grid-connected operation modes in the dc side of the microgrid
are analyzed. Concretely, a three-level hierarchical control system nected into a microgrid separately, the interfacing converters
is implemented. In the primary control level, the decentralized are usually connected in parallel. With the parallel configura-
control is realized by using the droop method. Local ac current tion, the load power sharing among the converters has been a
proportional-resonant controller and dc voltage proportional-in- key research topic [9]–[13]. The output power should be appro-
tegral controller are employed. When the local load is connected priately shared based on the power ratings of each converter.
to the dc bus, dc droop control is applied to obtain equal or
proportional dc load current sharing. The common secondary
Various power sharing methods have been proposed and ana-
control level is designed to eliminate the dc bus voltage deviation lyzed. Centralized control method is proposed in [14], where
produced by the droop control, with dc bus voltage in the hybrid a central controller is adopted to give the current reference to
microgrid boosted to an acceptable range. After guaranteeing the each converter. Master-slave control in [15] performs a combi-
performance of the dc side standalone operation by means of the nation of one voltage-controlled converter and several current-
primary and secondary control levels, the tertiary control level is
controlled converters. The voltage-controlled converter gener-
thereafter employed to perform the connection to an external dc
system. Meanwhile, the impact of the bandwidth of the secondary ates the current reference for the other current-controlled con-
and tertiary control levels is discussed. The closed-loop model verters. In [16], a method named circular-chain-control (3C)
including all the three control levels is developed in order to is proposed, where the converters are cascade connected and
adjust the main control parameters and study the system stability. each converter generates the current reference for the adjacent
Experimental results of a kW parallel ac-dc converter one. Average current control method is shown in [17]. With
system have shown satisfactory realization of the designed system.
the method, the current references are generated and transferred
Index Terms—Hierarchical control, hybrid microgrid, parallel to each converter through a communication line. By using the
power electronics converter interface.
above methods, although the steady and dynamic performance
of current sharing can be guaranteed, the stability of the con-
I. INTRODUCTION trol system highly depends on high speed communications. The
system redundancy is lowered down and the maintenance cost

N OWADAYS renewable energy generation is expected to

be highly penetrated into modern electric grids [1], [2]. In
order to integrate different kinds of renewable energy sources,
is higher. Meanwhile, considering the distributed configuration
of a microgrid, the decentralized control method or the control
method based on low bandwidth communication (LBC) is more
the concept of microgrid was proposed several years ago [3]. suitable for microgrid applications. Therefore, the droop con-
Meanwhile, power electronics converters are usually used as trol method has been commonly employed to perform proper
the interfaces to connect each source to the common bus in a current sharing in a microgrid [10]–[13]. With droop control,
microgrid [4]–[6]. At the same time, ac and dc sources some- decentralized control for each interfacing converter is achieved.
times coexist in a practical microgrid. In order to deal with that, At the same time, no communication or only LBC is needed.
ac-dc hybrid microgrids have been studied in the literature [7], Among different communication methods, the local area net-
[8]. It is necessary to find effective control systems to facilitate work (LAN)/Ethernet and the optical fiber transmission can be
used for the implementation of high bandwidth communication
Manuscript received December 25, 2012; revised April 20, 2013; accepted (HBC). However, additional cost is needed to achieve the infra-
June 22, 2013. Date of publication July 23, 2013; date of current version Feb- structure for this communication method [18], [19]. Controller
ruary 14, 2014. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foun-
dation of China (51177083) and China Scholarship Council. Paper no. TSG-
area network (CAN) can be used as the LBC method [20]. Par-
00885-2012. ticularly, when the transmission distance becomes longer, the
X. Lu, K. Sun, and L. Huang are with Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, communication speed of CAN becomes lower. Meanwhile, for
China (e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected];
[email protected]).
LBC method, in ac systems, power line communication (PLC)
J. M. Guerrero, J. C. Vasquez, and R. Teodorescu are with the Institute of En- can be used [21], and PLC in dc systems has been also devel-
ergy Technology, Aalborg University, Aalborg 9220, Denmark (e-mail: joz@et. oped [22].
aau.dk; [email protected]; [email protected]).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
As ac power system is mainly utilized nowadays, more at-
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. tention is on ac microgrid [23], [24]. However, many kinds of
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TSG.2013.2272327 renewable energy sources have dc output, such as photovoltaic

1949-3053 © 2013 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
684 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SMART GRID, VOL. 5, NO. 2, MARCH 2014

(PV) modules and batteries. As aforementioned, both dc and ac verter. The performance of the control system with different
components usually coexist in one system. Therefore, they can communication bandwidth is validated by experiment in detail
form a hybrid microgrid. Different control methods of hybrid in this paper.
microgrids have been proposed in the literature. Droop control
is employed in [7] and the controllable loads with different ca- II. CLASSIFICATION OF DIFFERENT OPERATION MODES IN A
pacities are taken into account. A coordinate control method for HYBRID AC-DC MICROGRID
a hybrid microgrid composed of various kinds of renewable en-
As aforementioned, an ac-dc hybrid microgrid consists of
ergy sources is proposed in [8], where detailed models of PV
modules, batteries and wind turbines are derived and the en- three parts: ac microgrid, dc microgrid and multiple parallel in-
ergy management strategy for the whole system is developed. A terfaces between ac and dc buses. Considering the configuration
configuration with both dc and ac links and the corresponding of the ac-dc hybrid system, different operation modes and their
control method are presented in [25], where the dc-link is em- power flow patterns are shown in Fig. 1.
ployed to integrate the local converters with dc couplings and Mode (a) and (b) are the operation modes of pure ac mi-
it is connected to the common ac-link through dc-ac interfacing crogrid and dc microgrid, respectively. Mode (c) and (d) are
converters. A power quality enhancement method is proposed the operation modes considering the interfacing converters be-
in [26], where the unbalanced and nonlinear loads are taken into tween ac and dc buses. In Mode (a), the ac loads are supplied
account and the control strategy is developed in a multi-bus mi- by the sources in the ac side. Meanwhile, when the ac grid-con-
crogrid. The above methods are useful to enhance the perfor- nected static switch turns on, the power in the local microgrid
mance of a hybrid microgrid. However, they mainly focus on exchanges with the external ac grid. In Mode (b), the local dc
the ac side of the system. A typical ac-dc hybrid microgrid con- loads are supplied by the sources in the dc side. When the dc
sists of three main parts: (I) ac microgrid, (II) dc microgrid and grid-connected static switch turns on, the power in the local mi-
(III) power electronics interfaces between ac and dc buses. In crogrid exchanges with the external dc grid. In Mode (c), the ac
[27], a generalized droop control method is proposed to achieve loads are supplied by the sources in the dc side. When the system
the proper power sharing in different parts of a hybrid microgrid, turns to grid-connected mode, the power exchanges between the
while the deviation produced by droop control should be further dc-side sources and external ac grid. In Mode (d), the dc loads
eliminated and the control of the power exchange between the are supplied by the sources in the ac side. When turning into
local and external grids should be discussed. In [28], the control grid-connected mode, the power exchanges between the ac-side
systems of ac microgrids and dc microgrids are analyzed and a sources and external dc grid. Notice that the practical operation
hierarchical control system is developed. However, in the work modes can be regarded as the composition of the above four
related to the dc microgrids, only the basic simulation results basic operation modes.
based on parallel buck converters are shown. Meanwhile, the Hierarchical control systems of Mode (a) and (b) have already
operation of the interfacing converters between ac and dc buses been discussed in [28]. In Mode (c), the dc bus voltage is kept
is not included. stable by controlling the converters in the dc microgrid. This is
This paper accomplishes an extension of the hierarchical con- out of scope of this paper since it is essentially from dc to ac and
trol system with the discussion of different operation modes, es- the control system is equivalent to Mode (a). The different op-
pecially for the interfacing converters between ac and dc buses eration modes and the usage of the hierarchical control system
in a hybrid microgrid. Meanwhile, the impact of the LBC on the in a hybrid microgrid are summarized in Table I.
system stability is studied in detail. Concretely, the hierarchical This paper focuses on Mode (d). In Mode (d), if considering
control system for the interfacing power electronics converters the operation of dc/dc converters in the dc microgrid part, since
consists of three levels. In the primary level, distributed control the dc bus voltage is formed by controlling the parallel inter-
is realized. Current proportional-resonant (PR) controller and facing converters between ac and dc buses, the renewable en-
voltage proportional-integral (PI) controller are achieved indi- ergy sources in the dc microgrid, e.g., PVs, which commonly
vidually in each of the converters. Droop controller for dc cur- run in MPPT mode, operate in current-controlled mode to be-
rent sharing is also employed. In the secondary control level, the have as grid-connected modules and inject its maximum output
dc voltage deviation produced by droop control is eliminated. power into the dc bus. Meanwhile, the energy storage units in
In order to realize current sharing between parallel droop-con- the dc microgrid operate in voltage-controlled mode and
trolled converters, there is a tradeoff between current sharing droop control method is also employed in their control systems.
accuracy and dc voltage deviation [29]. The target of the sec- In Mode (d), the power flows from the ac side to the dc side.
ondary PI controller is to restore the voltage deviation and main- Since the power generation in the ac microgrid is more sufficient
tain the current sharing accuracy. Both the primary and sec- than that in the dc microgrid, the interfacing converters between
ondary levels of the hierarchical control system are employed ac and dc buses are selected to form the dc bus voltage.
in the dc-side standalone operation mode. In order to control If considering the operation of dc/ac converters in the ac mi-
the power exchange between local dc bus and other external crogrid part, similar to the converter control in the dc microgrid
dc grids, the PI controller in the tertiary control level is used. part, the renewable energy sources, such as PVs, also operate
It should be noticed that both secondary and tertiary control in current-controlled mode to behave as grid-connected mod-
levels have remarkable low bandwidth characteristics, which ules and inject its maximum power into the ac bus. Meanwhile,
guarantee that the bandwidth will not interfere with the decen- the energy storage units operate in voltage-controlled mode and
tralized controllers in the primary control level for each con- droop control method is used for them [11]. Since
LU et al.: HIERARCHICAL CONTROL OF PARALLEL AC-DC CONVERTER INTERFACES 685

only the analysis of the hierarchical control system for this part
is performed in detail.

III. DESIGN AND EVALUATION OF THE DC-SIDE HIERARCHICAL

CONTROL SYSTEM FOR THE INTERFACING CONVERTERS
BETWEEN AC AND DC BUSES
In order to enhance the performance of the parallel power
electronics interfaces for Mode (d) in Fig. 1, a dc-side hierar-
chical control system is implemented, as shown in Fig. 2, and
the function and characteristic of each control level is shown in
Table II. Concretely, local dc voltage and ac current controllers
are included in the primary level. Also in the distributed primary
control level, dc output current sharing is achieved by using
droop controller. In the secondary control level, the deviation
caused by the droop control is eliminated. The dc bus voltage is
boosted to the acceptable range. DC grid-connected current is
controlled in the tertiary control level. The detailed design and
evaluation of the whole dc-side hierarchical control system is
shown below.

A. Primary Control Level

In the primary control level, the conventional double loop
control diagram is employed first, including the inner ac cur-
rent loop and outer dc voltage loop. PR controller is used for ac
current control, and PI controller is used for dc voltage control.
The above controllers are shown as

(1)

where is the transfer function of the PR controller for ac

current in the primary control level, and are the
parameters of the proportional and resonant terms respectively.

(2)

where is the transfer function of the PI controller for dc

voltage in the primary control level, and are the
parameters of the proportional and integral terms respectively.
Since the above PR and PI controllers have the common form,
no more descriptions are shown here for brevity.
In order to reach proper load power sharing in the dc side,
droop control is employed. The reference value of the dc output
voltage is obtained by using droop curve, as shown in
Fig. 3, where and are the upper and lower bound-
Fig. 1. Different operation modes and the corresponding power flow in an aries of local dc voltage, is the design margin, and
ac-dc hybrid microgrid. (a) AC microgrid operation. (b) DC microgrid oper-
ation. (c) Hybrid microgrid operation with dc to ac power flow. (d) Hybrid mi-
is the virtual resistance.
crogrid operation with ac to dc power flow. The dc side droop control method can be expressed as

(3)
in Mode (d), sufficient power is generated in the ac microgrid As mentioned above, by using droop control, the dc voltage
part, the ac bus voltage is formed by the energy storage units in deviation is involved, which makes the dc voltage quality low-
the ac side. The deviation produced by droop control is elimi- ered down. Hence, the value of the virtual resistance should
nated by employing secondary control in the control system for not be so large that can be kept within the acceptable range,
the energy storage units in the ac microgrid part. In this way, the as shown as
ac bus voltage can be formed to stabilize the input of the inter-
facing converters between ac and dc buses.
It should be noted that since the research subject is focused on
the interfacing converters between ac and dc buses in this paper, (4)
686 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SMART GRID, VOL. 5, NO. 2, MARCH 2014

TABLE I
SUMMARY OF DIFFERENT OPERATION MODES.

Fig. 4. Effect of secondary control on dc voltage restoration.

If neglecting the line resistances,

(6)

Hence, it can be derived that

Fig. 2. DC-Side hierarchical control diagram.
(7)
TABLE II
FUNCTION AND CHARACTERISTIC OF EACH CONTROL LEVEL.
It means that equal or proportional dc load current sharing
can be achieved by using equal or proportional virtual resistance
respectively.

B. Secondary Control Level

The secondary control level consists of a common dc voltage
PI controller. This control loop has remarkable low bandwidth
characteristic. With the secondary controller, the dc voltage de-
viation produced by droop control in the primary control level
can be restored, as shown in Fig. 4.
The secondary control features are analyzed in this subsec-
tion. The control diagram, including primary control, secondary
control and a delay block are shown in Fig. 5. Here, the transfer
function of the PI controller in the primary control level is
Fig. 3. DC voltage deviation caused by droop control.
shown in (2). Meanwhile, the PI controller in the secondary
control level is shown as:

where is the full load current in the dc side. (8)

In order to realize both equal and proportional current
where is the transfer function of the PI controller for
sharing, the corresponding droop control relationship can be
common dc bus voltage in the secondary control level,
realized as
and are the parameters of the proportional and integral
terms respectively.
, and represent the transfer functions
(5)
of the communication delay, the current loop in the primary
LU et al.: HIERARCHICAL CONTROL OF PARALLEL AC-DC CONVERTER INTERFACES 687

Fig. 5. Control diagram of the secondary control level.

Fig. 7. Family of the closed-loop poles of the secondary control level when
increasing the time delay.

Fig. 6. Detailed structure of the AC-DC power interface. TABLE III

SYSTEM PARAMETERS.

control level and the power plant, respectively. Among them,

is expressed as

(9)

where the parameter represents the time delay in this control

level, which is used to simulate different communication band-
width.
Since the current loop is the inner control loop of the primary
control level and the bandwidth of the inner loop is much higher
than the outer loop, is simplified as a delay unit for one
control period, as shown below in (10).
It should be noted that the analysis in the rotating frame with
(10) the variables in the d and q axis is employed only to derive the
transfer function of in (13). The ac current controllers
where is the control period. adopted in the primary control level of the hierarchical control
In order to form the feedback channel in the secondary dc system are realized in the stationary frame, with the variables in
voltage loop, is employed to show the relationship from the and axis.
the inner loop current to the dc voltage. It can be achieved by By using the system parameters in Table III, the closed-loop
using the small signal analysis, as shown in [30]. Neglecting poles of the whole system with increasing time delay are
the losses in the converter, the active power in the ac side can reached in Fig. 7, where only dominant poles are shown.
be considered to be the same as that in the dc side. By analyzing The location of different closed-loop poles is determined by
the circuit in Fig. 6, the following relationship can be reached. changing the value of the communication delay.
The trajectory of the dominant poles with different time delay
(11) is divided into three parts. When the time delay becomes larger,
the dominant pole is moving towards its final point . It can
where and are the ac voltage, and are the ac current, be seen that the whole trajectory of is located on the left half
is the dc voltage, is the dc capacitor, and is the dc plane. At the same time, when the time delay turns larger,
load current. and are moving gradually towards imaginary axis. It should
The small signal expression of (11) can be derived as be pointed out that even the delay is as large as 0.2 s, and
are . Therefore, the system has enough stability
margins and the low bandwidth characteristic of the secondary
control level is verified. Notice that the root , which moves
(12) faster towards the imaginary axis than and , ends at the
point . For some communication delays, only and are
Since is controlled by the current component , the other dominants and the effect of can be neglected.
perturbations can be neglected and the transfer function from
to is obtained: C. Tertiary Control Level
The above primary and secondary control levels are em-
(13)
ployed in the dc-side standalone operation mode. With the
688 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SMART GRID, VOL. 5, NO. 2, MARCH 2014

TABLE IV
CONTROLLER PARAMETERS OF THE DC-SIDE HIERARCHICAL CONTROL.

Fig. 8. Control diagram of the tertiary control level.

Fig. 9. Family of the closed-loop poles of the tertiary control level when in-
creasing the time delay. Notice that when the communication delay increases, and
move away from the imaginary axis, while and move
towards the imaginary axis. For some communication delays,
progress of distributed generation, areas with multiple micro- and are dominants, and the effect of and can be
grid clusters can be found. In this situation, similar to that in an neglected.
ac microgrid, it is useful to pay attention to the interaction in the It should be guaranteed that the local dc voltage is maintained
dc side between the local microgrid and external dc grid. The in the acceptable range, not only in the standalone mode but also
seamless transfer between dc standalone and grid-connected in the grid-connected mode. Since the output of the tertiary con-
operation modes should be guaranteed. In order to meet this troller is added into the dc voltage reference value and PI con-
requirement, a tertiary control level in the dc-side hierarchical troller is employed in the secondary control level, it is reached
control system is employed. In this control level, as same as in the steady state that
that in the secondary control level, a common dc grid current (14)
PI controller is used. This control level also has remarkable
low bandwidth characteristic. The target of tertiary control where is the reference value of dc bus voltage, is the
is to realize dc grid-connected current control. Concretely, output value of tertiary PI controller.
dc load sharing is firstly achieved by the droop controller in Therefore, the local dc voltage will be shifted by when the
the decentralized primary control level. And then, secondary system is operated in the grid-connected mode. As a result,
control is employed to restore the deviation produced by droop should be limited within the acceptable range. Assuming that the
control. When the difference between dc output voltage and dc reference voltage is 600V and the maximum dc voltage error
dc grid voltage are within the acceptable range, the static is 5%, the maximum and minimum are thereby confirmed as
switch for grid-connected operation is turned on. At the same , which are the PI output upper and lower limits of the
time, the tertiary control level is activated to control the dc tertiary control (see Fig. 8).
grid-connected current. As a summary of the design for the dc-side hierarchical
The features of tertiary control level are analyzed in this sub- control system, all parameters of the controllers are listed in
section. The control configuration of this control level is shown Table IV.
in Fig. 8, where both the primary and secondary control levels
are included. A delay block is also cascade connected with the D. Interaction Between Different Control Levels
tertiary PI controller to model the LBC. Here, by using the In the above design procedure of the hierarchical control
system parameters in Table III, the dominant poles with in- system, the inner control level has been taken into account
creasing time delay are shown in Fig. 9. It is seen that the trajec- when designing the outer control level. At the same time, the
tory of the dominant poles can be divided into four parts. When influence of the inner control level has been considered when
the time delay increases, the dominant poles and move adjusting the controller parameters in the outer levels.
gradually away from the imaginary axis. Meanwhile, the dom- In order to study the interaction between different control
inant poles and move towards the imaginary axis, while levels, the dominant poles of the whole control system are
even the time delay is as large as 1 s, and are , shown in Fig. 10. It can be seen that when going from lower
respectively. Therefore, the system has acceptable stability mar- to upper levels, the system dynamics become slower. Further-
gins and the low bandwidth characteristic of the tertiary control more, the natural frequencies of the dominant poles of each
level is demonstrated. control level are separated between each other by about one
LU et al.: HIERARCHICAL CONTROL OF PARALLEL AC-DC CONVERTER INTERFACES 689

Fig. 12. Local dc voltage response.

Fig. 10. Dominant poles of different control levels.

Fig. 13. Local ac current response.

Fig. 14. Equal sharing of dc output current by droop control.

Fig. 11. System configuration of the prototype.

decade (primary: , secondary: and tertiary:

). Consequently, it can be concluded that each
control level do not affects the dynamics of the others.
Fig. 15. DC voltage deviation produced by droop control.
IV. EXPERIMENTAL VALIDATION
A 2 2.2 kW prototype of parallel converter interface for ex-
perimental validation was implemented. The detailed configura- dc current sharing is performed. When and
tion of the experimental setup is shown in Fig. 11. The parame- , curve for proportional current sharing is drawn
ters of the system are the same as those chosen in the theoretical in Fig. 16. For a certain value of dc voltage, the corresponding
analysis, as listed in Table III. current values of Converter #1 and Converter #2 can be got in
In the primary control level, voltage and current controllers Fig. 16. It can be reached that , so
are tested first without droop control. The local dc voltage wave- the proportional dc current sharing can be realized.
form is shown in Fig. 12 and the corresponding local ac current In the secondary control level, in order to flexibly regulate the
response is shown in Fig. 13. Then, droop control is verified. communication delay in the experiment, a sample & hold block
When droop controller is activated, the dc current is equally is employed in the experimental program. The output value of
shared, while the deviation in the dc voltage appears, as shown the secondary or tertiary controller is transferred to each con-
in Figs. 14 and 15. After testing equal dc sharing, proportional verter at a low frequency by using the sampling & hold block.
690 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SMART GRID, VOL. 5, NO. 2, MARCH 2014

Fig. 19. Output of dc voltage secondary controller.

Fig. 16. Simulation and experimental test of dc current proportional sharing

with different load currents.

Fig. 20. DC grid-connected current with tertiary control.

Fig. 17. DC voltage restoration of secondary control.

Fig. 21. DC voltage with tertiary control.

Fig. 18. Load step response of dc voltage secondary control. switch for grid-connected operation is turned on. A bidirec-
tional dc source should be provided to implement the dc grid.
Therefore, a third ac-dc converter was adopted to achieve the
The output value of the secondary or tertiary controller at the above dc source. For safety consideration, the dc voltage refer-
beginning of each transmission interval is held until the next ence value is lowered down to 600V in the dc grid-connected
transmission starts. When , the secondary control level test. Fig. 20 shows the dc grid-connected current regulated by
turns on. The effect of secondary controller is shown in Fig. 17. the tertiary PI controller. The dc current reference value is set
It can be seen that the deviation produced by the droop con- to . When the dc grid-connected current is
troller can be restored by secondary dc voltage controller. The changing, the dc voltage waveform is exhibited in Fig. 21 ac-
load regulation is also tested by changing the load resistance cordingly. It is shown that dc current can be controlled to follow
from to , as shown in Fig. 18. It can be seen that the reference value as expected. Meanwhile, the steady value
by using the secondary control level, the dc bus voltage can be of dc voltage is guaranteed to be within the acceptable range
kept stable during the transient process of load step. The output . The output waveform of the tertiary
waveform of the secondary controller is shown in Fig. 19. For controller is exhibited in Fig. 22. It is shown from the stair-shape
comparison, the output waveform of the secondary controller that the LBC is reached.
without the sampling and hold block is also shown. It is seen
from the stair-shape that the LBC is reached. V. CONCLUSION
In the tertiary control level, similar to the secondary control Different operation modes of a hybrid microgrid are dis-
level, the sample & hold unit is also employed to model the cussed in this paper. Focusing on the interfacing converters
LBC. When the dc voltage is guaranteed to be within the ac- between ac bus and dc bus, a dc-side hierarchical control
ceptable range, the tertiary control is activated and the static system is designed and evaluated in this paper to analyze both
LU et al.: HIERARCHICAL CONTROL OF PARALLEL AC-DC CONVERTER INTERFACES 691

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[9] Z. Ye, K. Xing, S. Mazumder, D. Borojevic, and F. C. Lee, “Mod- under real grid conditions,” in Proc. IEEE PESC, 2004, pp. 1156–1162.
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based dc distributed power systems,” in Proc. IEEE APEC, 2008, pp. Xiaonan Lu (S’11) was born in Tianjin, China,
1126–1132. 1985. He received the B.E. and Ph.D. degree in
[10] J. M. Guerrero, L. Hang, and J. Uceda, “Control of distributed uninter- electrical engineering from Tsinghua University,
ruptible power supply systems,” IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 55, Beijing, China, in 2008 and 2013, respectively.
no. 8, pp. 2845–2859, 2008. From September 2010 to August 2011 he was
[11] J. M. Guerrero et al., “Control strategy for flexible microgrid based on a guest Ph.D. student at Department of Energy
parallel line-interactive ups systems,” IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. Technology, Aalborg University, Denmark. His
56, no. 3, pp. 726–736, 2009. research interests are control of power electronics
[12] X. Lu, J. M. Guerrero, K. Sun, and J. C. Vasquez, “An improved droop interfacing converters for renewable generation
control method for dc microgrids based on low bandwidth communi- systems and microgrids, multilevel converters, and
cation with dc bus voltage restoration and enhanced current sharing matrix converters.
accuracy,” IEEE Trans. Power Electron.. Mr. Lu is a student member of IEEE PELS Society.
692 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SMART GRID, VOL. 5, NO. 2, MARCH 2014

Josep M. Guerrero (S’01–M’04–SM’08) received Currently, he is an Assistant Professor at Aalborg University in Denmark. His
the B.S. degree in telecommunications engineering, research interests include modeling, simulation, networked control systems and
the M.S. degree in electronics engineering, and the optimization for power management systems applied to Distributed Generation
Ph.D. degree in power electronics from the Technical in AC/DC Microgrids.
University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain, in 1997,
2000, and 2003, respectively.
He was an Associate Professor with the Depart-
ment of Automatic Control Systems and Computer Remus Teodorescu (S’96–A’97–M’99–SM’02–
Engineering, Technical University of Catalonia, F’12) received the Dipl.Ing. degree in electrical
teaching courses on digital signal processing, engineering from the Polytechnic University of
field-programmable gate arrays, microprocessors, Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania, in 1989 and the
and control of renewable energy. In 2004, he was responsible for the Renewable Ph.D. degree in power electronics from the Univer-
Energy Laboratory, Escola Industrial de Barcelona. Since 2011, he has been a sity of Galati, Galati, Romania, in 1994.
Full Professor with the Department of Energy Technology, Aalborg University, In 1998, he joined the Power Electronics Section,
Aalborg East, Denmark, where he is responsible for the microgrid research Department of Energy Technology, Aalborg Univer-
program. From 2012 he is also a guest Professor at the Chinese Academy sity, Aalborg, Denmark, where he is currently a Pro-
of Science and the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. His fessor. He has more than 200 papers published, one
research interests is oriented to different microgrid aspects, including power book, entitled Grid Converters for Photovoltaic and
electronics, distributed energy-storage systems, hierarchical and cooperative Wind Power Systems (Wiley, 2011), and five patents. His research interests in-
control, energy management systems, and optimization of microgrids and clude the design and control of power converters used in photovoltaics and wind
islanded minigrids. power systems, grid integration with wind power, medium-voltage converters,
Prof. Guerrero is an Associate Editor for the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER HVDC/FACTS, and energy storage.
ELECTRONICS, the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, and Dr. Teodorescu was an Associate Editor for IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER
the IEEE Industrial Electronics Magazine, and an Editor for the IEEE ELECTRONICS LETTERS. He is the Chair of the IEEE Danish Joint Industrial
TRANSACTIONS ON SMART GRID. He has been Guest Editor of the IEEE Electronics/Power Electronics/Industry Applications Society Chapter. He is the
TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS Special Issues: Power Electronics Founder and Coordinator of the Green Power Laboratory, Aalborg University,
for Wind Energy Conversion and Power Electronics for Microgrids; the IEEE focusing on the development and testing of grid converters for renewable energy
TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS Special Sections: Uninter- systems. He is the Coordinator of Vestas Power Program, involving ten Ph.D.
ruptible Power Supplies systems, Renewable Energy Systems, Distributed students and Guest Professors in the areas of power electronics, power systems,
Generation and Microgrids, and Industrial Applications and Implementation and energy storage.
Issues of the Kalman Filter; and the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SMART GRID
Special Issue on Smart DC Distribution Systems. He was the chair of the
Renewable Energy Systems Technical Committee of the IEEE Industrial
Electronics Society.
Lipei Huang was born in Jiangsu, China, 1946.
He received the B.E. and M.E. degrees in electrical
engineering from Tsinghua University, Beijing,
China, in 1970 and 1982, respectively, and the Ph.D.
Kai Sun (M’12) was born in Beijing, China, 1977. degree from Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan, in 1996.
He received the B.E., M.E., and Ph.D. degrees in In 1970, he joined the Department of Electrical
electrical engineering all from Tsinghua University, Engineering, Tsinghua University.
Beijing, China, in 2000, 2002, and 2006, respec- Since 1994, he has been a Professor in the Depart-
tively. ment of Electrical Engineering, Tsinghua University.
In 2006, he joined the faculty of Tsinghua Univer- In 1987, he was a Visiting Scholar of Electrical Engi-
sity as a Lecturer of Electrical Engineering, where neering at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, for three
he is currently an Associate Professor. From Sep. months, and at Meiji University, Kawasaki, Japan, for nine months. He joined
2009 to Aug. 2010 he was a Visiting Scholar at De- the research projects of K. Matsuse Laboratory, Department of Electrical Engi-
partment of Energy Technology, Aalborg University, neering, Meiji University, Kawasaki, Japan, as a Visiting Professor in 1993. He
Denmark. He has authored more than 80 technical has authored more than 100 technical papers and holds 7 patents. His research
papers, including 9 international journal papers. His main research interests are interests are in power electronics and adjustable-speed drives.
power converters for renewable generation systems and AC motor drives. Prof. Huang received the Education Awards from the China Education Com-
Dr. Sun received the Delta Young Scholar Award in 2013. mission and Beijing People’s Government in 1997. From 2001 to 2003 he was
a Delta Scholar.

Juan C. Vasquez (M’12) received the B.S. degree in

electronics engineering from Autonoma University
of Manizales, Colombia, in 2004 where he has been
teaching courses on digital circuits, servo systems
and flexible manufacturing systems. In 2009, He
received the Ph.D. degree from the Technical Uni-
versity of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain, in 2009 at
the Department of Automatic Control Systems and
Computer Engineering, from Technical University
of Catalonia, Barcelona (Spain), where he worked as
Post-doc Assistant and also teaching courses based
on renewable energy systems.