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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, VOL. 43, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2007

Robust Control Scheme for a Microgrid With

PFC Capacitor Connected
Yun Wei Li, Member, IEEE, D. Mahinda Vilathgamuwa, Senior Member, IEEE, and Poh Chiang Loh, Member, IEEE

AbstractCapacitors are widely used for power-factor correction (PFC) in power systems. When a PFC capacitor is installed
with a certain load in a microgrid, it may be in parallel with the
filter capacitor of the inverter interfacing the utility grid and the
local distributed-generation unit and, thus, change the effective
filter capacitance. Another complication is the possibility of occurrence of resonance in the microgrid. This paper conducts an
in-depth investigation of the effective shunt-filter-capacitance variation and resonance phenomena in a microgrid due to a connection
of a PFC capacitor. To compensate the capacitance-parameter
variation, an H controller is designed for the voltage-sourceinverter voltage control. By properly choosing the weighting functions, the synthesized H controller would exhibit high gains
at the vicinity of the line frequency, similar to traditional highperformance P+ resonant controller and, thus, would possess
nearly zero steady-state error. However, with the robust H
controller, it will be possible to explicitly specify the degree of
robustness in face of parameter variations. Furthermore, a thorough investigation is carried out to study the performance of inner
current-loop feedback variables under resonance conditions. It
reveals that filter-inductor current feedback is more effective in
damping the resonance. This resonance can be further attenuated by employing the dual-inverter microgrid conditioner and
controlling the series inverter as a virtual resistor affecting only
harmonic components without interference with the fundamental
power flow. And finally, the study in this paper has been tested
experimentally using an experimental microgrid prototype.
Index TermsDistributed generation (DG), H control,
microgrids, power-factor-correction (PFC) capacitor, resonance
attenuation.

I. I NTRODUCTION

ISTRIBUTED-GENERATION (DG) systems, powered

by microsources, such as fuel cells, photovoltaic cells,
and microturbines, have been gaining popularity due to their
higher operating efficiencies, improved reliabilities, and lower
emissions. A more recent concept is to group a cluster of loads
and paralleled DG systems in a common local area to form a
microgrid [1], [2]. Being a larger entity, a microgrid possesses
a larger power capacity and more control flexibilities to fulfill

Paper MSDAD-07-12, presented at the 2005 Industry Applications Society

Annual Meeting, Hong Kong, October 26, and approved for publication in
the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS by the Industrial
Automation and Control Committee of the IEEE Industry Applications Society.
Manuscript submitted for review October 31, 2005 and released for publication
March 22, 2007.
Y. W. Li is with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 2V4, Canada.
D. M. Vilathgamuwa and P. C. Loh are with the Center for Advanced
Power Electronics, School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang
Technological University, Singapore 639798 (e-mail: emahinda@ntu.edu.sg).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TIA.2007.904388

system-reliability and power-quality requirements, in addition

to all inherited advantages of a single DG system.
Being a larger system also means that the microgrid can easily be disturbed by numerous power devices connected within
its vicinity, such as the switching of power-factor-correction
(PFC) capacitors, which is widely used for improving system
efficiency. There are plenty of reasons for PFC applications in
the customer side, such as reduced electric utility bill, reduced
losses and, therefore, heating in lines and transformers, increased voltage at the load, and, more importantly, elimination
of utility power-factor penalties [3]. It is therefore necessary to
consider the scenario of PFC capacitor application in a microgrid, where the switching of capacitor can cause more complex
phenomena than the traditional drawbacks (such as adjustablespeed-drive tripping and malfunctioning of other electrically
controlled load equipment). Other than the optimization of DG
systems and PFC capacitors operation from the system point of
view, as discussed in [4] and [5], switching of PFC capacitor
within a microgrid can cause system-parameter variations and,
hence, performance degradation of the designed DG controller.
The presence of PFC capacitors would also result in high resonant voltages and currents, which could damage semiconductor
devices and other power equipment or jeopardize the control
scheme leading to malfunctioning of the microgrid.
To address the aforementioned complications, this paper
presents an integrated control algorithm, comprising of an
H voltage controller, an inner filter-inductor current-feedback
controller, and a virtual-resistance compensator, for operating
the microgrid with reduced parameter sensitivity and improved
damping performance. This paper begins by designing an H
voltage controller for stable control of the DG interfacing
voltage-source inverter (VSI) even when its effective filter
capacitance changes by the switching of PFC capacitors connected to a local load in the microgrid (Load1 in Fig. 1).
By properly selecting the weighting functions, the synthesized
H controller would have high gains at the vicinity of the
line frequency, similar to the traditional high-performance P+
resonant controller [12] and, thus, possess nearly zero steadystate error with its degree of robustness explicitly specified.
This paper then evaluates filter-inductor and filter-capacitor
inner current-control possibilities to show that filter-inductor
current control is more effective in resonant damping for cases
where the microgrid operates in islanding mode with PFC
capacitors connected across a remote load (Load2 at point of
common coupling (PCC) in Fig. 1). For DG system with an
additional series inverter [6], this paper also presents a virtualresistance compensator for controlling the series inverter to
further dampen the system resonance. Similar to [7] and [8],

0093-9994/$25.00 2007 IEEE

LI et al.: ROBUST CONTROL SCHEME FOR A MICROGRID WITH PFC CAPACITOR CONNECTED

Fig. 1.

1173

Microgrid system with a single DG.

the series inverter is controlled to resist only harmonic components without affecting the fundamental power flow. Lastly,
the integrated controller developed in this paper has been
tested experimentally using an emulated laboratory microgrid
system.
II. M ODELING AND A NALYSIS OF A M ICROGRID S YSTEM
W ITH PFC C APACITOR C ONNECTED
The microgrid system with a single DG is shown in Fig. 1.
As shown, the DG source is interfaced to the utility grid using
a VSI, whose functionalities are to regulate load voltages and
dispatch power in the microgrid, share the power demand
changes with other parallel DG systems in the microgrid when
the microgrid islands, and to synchronize the microgrid with the
utility for their smooth connection [9]. There can be two possible locations for the loads to be connected in the microgrid.
Load1 is the local load of a DG system, and the DG system
provides local power and voltage support for it. Load2 at the
PCC is separated from the DG system by a distribution line.
Usually, Load2 is supplied by both the microgrid and the utility
in grid-connected mode of the microgrid operation and solely
by the microgrid in islanding mode.
The PFC capacitor can be connected in parallel with Load1
or Load2 in the microgrid. When connected with Load1, the
PFC capacitor is also in parallel with the filter capacitor of the
interfacing VSI, causing an increase of effective capacitance of
VSI filter capacitor. Note that the increase of the filter capacitance will reduce the LC cutoff frequency and, subsequently,
affect the performance of VSI controller, which is tuned with
original parameters. Therefore, attention must be paid in the
controller design.
A second possible location for the PFC capacitor to be
installed is in parallel with Load2 at the PCC. In this condition,
a resonant circuit can be formed by the PFC capacitor and
the line inductor. But this potential resonance condition in the
microgrid needs to be studied in the two modes of the microgrid
operation, namely, grid-connected mode and islanding mode,
where the resonant circuit behaves differently.
A. Grid-Connected Mode
The equivalent circuit of the microgrid system with a PFC
capacitor connected with Load2 is illustrated in Fig. 2, where
Load1 and Load2 are represented as current sources, and the
DG system output voltage (filtered inverter output voltage) is
treated as a voltage source. Fig. 2(a) shows the grid-connected
mode, where the utility voltage at PCC would also be repre-

Fig. 2. Equivalent circuit of the resonant microgrid system. (a) Gridconnected mode. (b) Islanding mode.

sented as a voltage source, since it is stiff enough as compared

to the voltage in the microgrid. As a result, the line current
is completely determined by the difference of the DG-system
output voltage and the PCC voltage. Therefore, in the gridconnected mode of operation, the resonance between the PFC
capacitor and the line impedance is highly suppressed.
B. Islanding Mode
Fig. 2(b) illustrates the equivalent circuit for the microgrid
system in islanding mode. In this equivalent circuit, observed
from Load2 side, the PFC capacitor and the line inductance
form a parallel resonant circuit. Thus, harmonic line currents
in the vicinity of resonant frequency drawn by Load2 can
be amplified excessively. Looking from the DG system side,
the PFC capacitor and the line inductance represent a series
resonant circuit, and harmonic voltages injected by the DG
system in the range of resonant frequency can cause amplified
resonant voltage on Load2 and the PFC capacitor. According
to the equivalent circuit in Fig. 2(b), the transfer functions between load current iload2 and the line current iline and between
DG-system voltage and the Load2 voltage can be derived. It
turns out that these two transfer functions have the same form
Gres as follows:
Gres =

iline
Vpf
1
.
=
=
iload2
Vd
Lline Cpf s2 + Rline Cpf + 1

(1)

The peak response at resonant frequency mainly depends

on the ratio of Rline : 0 Lline in the line impedance. A larger
line resistance would damp out the resonance more quickly.
In a microgrid system at the distribution side, the ratio of
Rline : 0 Lline would be nearly 1 : 1. Even so, the resonance
can be serious, as discussed in Section III (also refer to Fig. 11).
Once a disturbance with frequency near the resonance value occurs, the resonance would be excited. The harmonic frequency
disturbance can be initiated by a disturbance in Load2 or DGsystem output voltage, such as when the microgrid islands or

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Fig. 3. Standard H configuration.

the dispatched power for the DG system changes, resulting

in a sudden change of reference voltage for the DG system.
These different sources of resonance have equally damaging
effect on the microgrid, as seen from (1). Note that, although
the islanding operation for a microgrid might last for a short
period, the resonance can cause inadmissible high line currents
or load voltages and could further disrupt the control of the
DG system.
III. A NALYSIS AND D ESIGN OF THE VSI C ONTROL
To mitigate the effects of the change of effective filter capacitance by the switching of PFC capacitors connected to Load1,
H controller is proposed for the VSI control. The form of
a standard configuration for H control synthesis is shown
in Fig. 3, where z, y, w, and u are the controlled output, the
measured output, the exogenous input, and the control input, respectively; GN is the nominal plant, and K(s) is the controller.
W1 and W3 are the weighting functions for error tracking and
robustness performance, respectively. W2 is the weight on the
controller transfer function. A small value (0.1) is assigned
to W2 to ensure the D12 matrix of the augmented plant is of
full rank as required by the MATLAB augtf and hinf functions
[15]. By proper selection of the weighting functions, both good
robustness and steady-state error-tracking performance can be
guaranteed.
An inner current-feedback loop is also employed to improve transient performance. But a special attention should be
paid to the feedback-current variables, since different feedback
variables for the current loop behaves quite differently during
resonance situation caused by the switching of PFC capacitor
connected to Load2. Detailed analysis will be given in the
following sections.
A. H Controller for the Voltage Loop
1) Weighting Function for Robust Performance: The nominal plant (with current-loop closed) can be described as
GN =

kC Vdc /2
Cf Lf s2 + Cf (Rf + kC Vdc /2)s + 1

(2)

where kC is the proportional controller for the current loop.

For the filter-capacitance uncertainty, a tolerance of parameter
variation from 0% to 500% is applied for the H controller
design. This parameter uncertainty can be transformed to multiplicative output uncertainty [10], and the resulting relative plant

Fig. 4.

Singular values of (s) and W3 .

uncertainty with respect to the nominal plant is expressed as

follows:



GP GN
(s) =
(3)
GN
where (s) is the plant uncertainty, GP is the disturbed plant,
and (H) stands for the singular values of transfer function H.
For the robustness measure, the requirement of W3 T  <
1 must be satisfied, where T (s) = GN (s)K(s)/(1 +
GN (s)K(s)) is the complementary sensitivity transfer function. By using filter capacitor as 500% of its nominal value,
the worst case (s) can be obtained. Finally, the weighting
function W3 is determined from the worst case (s) and is
selected to lie just above the worst case uncertainty spectrum,
as shown in Fig. 4. The weighting function can be described by
W3 = 0.000133 s + 0.8.
2) Weighting Function for Tracking-Error Performance:
The tracking-error performance can be expressed in terms
of H constrain as W1 S < 1, where S(s) = 1/(1 +
GN (s)K(s)) is the sensitivity transfer function (transfer function from reference to error). For proper shaping of the
S(s) and, therefore, achieving satisfactory sinusoidal referencetracking performance, the weighting function W1 should be
carefully determined. The authors in [11] proposed a guideline
for the tracking of sinusoidal command by using phasors and
straight-line approximation of magnitude response. Unfortunately, the controller derived by this method will have relatively
high gains to achieve small steady-state error over the full
bandwidth and might be sensitive to system resonance caused
by the switching of PFC capacitor.
Since the reference command of the inverter is a sinusoid
at line frequency, a better choice would be to use a controller
that exhibits high gains at only line frequency while providing smaller gains at the other frequencies similar to the P+
resonant controller in [12] and [13]. Small tracking error at
the line frequency can be obtained by properly shaping S(s)
to have very small gain at the line frequency. This can be
achieved by using a standard second-order weighting function

LI et al.: ROBUST CONTROL SCHEME FOR A MICROGRID WITH PFC CAPACITOR CONNECTED

Fig. 5.

Singular values of 1/W1 , 1/W3 , S(s), and T (s).

1175

Fig. 6. Bode plot of the designed H controller.

for S(s) similar to [14]. This weighting function is shown as

follows:
W1 =

kA 02
s2 + 20 s + 02

(4)

where natural frequency 0 is selected as the line frequency.

The term kA in the numerator gives a freedom for adjusting the
tracking error over the whole frequency range, and the damping
ratio provides another degree of freedom for specifically
regulating the tracking-error performance at the line frequency
0 . Since the resulting S(s) is shaped in frequency according
to the profile specified by 1/W1 , a smaller gives a larger
peak response of W1 and, thus, guarantees smaller steadystate error at the line frequency. When 0, the resulting
H controller will act like an ideal P+ resonant controller,
which has theoretically zero steady-state error at the operating
frequency. In this paper, kA = 1 and = 0.01 are used.
3) Mixed-Sensitivity H-Controller Synthesis: Having defined necessary weighting functions, the next step is to conduct
mixed-sensitivity optimization control design to synthesize an
K(s), such that the H norm of the transfer functions from w
to z is less than one, as is expressed as follows:


 W1 S 


 W3 T  < 1.

(5)

By using MATLAB hinf function, K(s) can be synthesized,

which is then reduced to a third-order controller, as shown in
the following, for easy implementation:
K(s) =

0.02398s3 +1.222104 s2 +1.024107 s+5.629108

.
s3 +1.145105 s2 +8.228105 s+1.131010
(6)

Finally, the singular values of weighting functions 1/W1 ,

1/W3 , and the resulting S(s) and T (s) are shown in Fig. 5.
Bode plot of final H controller is shown in Fig. 6. As
expected, the designed H controller has high gains at the

Fig. 7. Robustness comparison between (a) designed H controller and

(b) P+ resonant controller under inverter-output filter-capacitance variation.

vicinity of the line frequency. Therefore, robust performance

with nearly zero steady-state error can be achieved.
With the similar steady-state-error regulation performance,
the P+ resonant controller is proposed in [12] and a practical
form of it is expressed in (7), where kP and kI are the proportional and integral gains, respectively, and cut is the parameter
to adjust the width of the resonant peak (an extremely narrow
resonant with infinite peak is not realizable at application). As
a stationary frame equivalent of the synchronous PI controller,
the P+ resonant controller also has significant gains around
0 and guarantees near zero steady-state error regulation at
this frequency. Although they share similar characteristics, the
synthesized H controller exhibits better performance under
system-parameter variations due to its explicitly designed robustness. As can be seen from the performance comparison
under DG startup process in Fig. 7, where both controllers

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TABLE I
SYSTEM PARAMETERS

feedback is more robust to the load disturbance: In this case, the

load current (treated as disturbance) will pass through G1 G2 or
G1 G2 and affect the load voltage. It is clear that smaller gain of
G1 G2 with capacitor current feedback ensures more stable load
voltage under the load-current disturbance.
With consideration of the dynamics of the VSI control model,
the resonance transfer function in (1) can be rewritten as
Vpf /Vref in (8), whose root-locus plot and bode-magnitude plot
are shown in Figs. 10 and 11, respectively,
Vpf
kC kV (Lload s + Rload )Vdc /2
=
Vref
a5 s5 + a4 s4 + a3 s3 + a2 s2 + a1 s + a0

are designed based on the system parameters in Table I and

implemented with 500% of the inverter output capacitance. The
lack of robustness for a P+ resonant controller under capacitance variation is obviously shown in Fig. 7. The proposed H
controller, which can explicitly specify the degree of robustness
in face of filter-capacitance variations due to the switching of a
PFC capacitor, is, therefore, more suitable for this paper. More
detailed theoretical discussions and experimental comparisons
of the H controller and P+ resonant controller can be found
in [13]
G(s) = kP +

2KI cut s
.
s2 + 2cut s + 02

(7)

B. Inner Current Loop

Filter-capacitor current feedback is usually used for better rejection of load-current disturbance when an inverter (with filter)
is directly connected to a load [16], [17]. While for the purpose
of damping a resonance caused by the switching of PFC capacitor connected to Load2 in this paper, filter-inductor current
feedback is found to be more effective, as will be discussed.
Fig. 8 shows the schematic of PFC capacitor-connected system and the controller of the inverter. To simplify the analysis,
two proportional controllers are used for the current and voltage
control loops. In addition, Load1 is not considered here due
to its limited effect on the resonance phenomena. The block
diagram in Fig. 8 can be simplified as in Fig. 9, with expressions
shown in the Appendix. Note that G2 and G2 represent function
blocks for cases of filter-inductor and filter-capacitor current
feedback, respectively.
It can be observed that the only difference between filterinductor and filter-capacitor current feedback is the presence
of an additional term of Vdc kC /2 in the numerator of G2 . As
shown in Fig. 9, the line current has a negative feedback loop
G1 G2 G3 or G1 G2 G3 , which would, in turn, compensate
the resonance once a resonance occurs between the line (G3 )
and the PFC capacitor-connected load (G4 ). Therefore, with
a larger feedback gain, the filter-inductor current feedback
would compensate the line-current resonance more effectively,
ensuring rapid attenuation of the system resonance. The block
diagram of Fig. 9 would also explain why capacitor current

(8)

where coefficients a5 to a0 for inductor current feedback is

given in the appendix (for capacitor current feedback, the last
term in a0 , a1 , and a2 will be Rf , instead of Rf + Vdc kC /2
for inductor current feedback; coefficients a3 to a5 is the same
for both approaches). It is clear from Fig. 10 that the transfer
functions with inner filter-inductor or filter-capacitor current
feedback share the same zero location. While for the five poles,
two of them are located at positions that are nearly ten times
away from the imaginary axis compared to the others, one is
on the real axis and is cancelled by the nearby zero. Therefore,
the dynamics of the transfer function mainly depend on the two
conjugate poles near the imaginary axis. For capacitor current
feedback, these two poles have damping ratio of 0.0703. The
corresponding damping ratio is increased to 0.163 with inductor
current feedback. Same effect can also be observed from bodemagnitude plot in Fig. 11, where the resonance is well damped
by filter-inductor current feedback.
Further analysis also reveals that, by using a smaller gain kV
for the voltage loop, the resonance damping for both currentfeedback methods is improved. However, a smaller kV means
larger steady-state error; therefore, the voltage controller should
have larger gain at the line frequency with small tracking
error while smaller gains at all the other frequencies for the
better damping of the resonance. Obviously, the proposed H
controller would be more suitable for this purpose.
IV. F URTHER R ESONANCE A TTENUATION U SING
D UAL -I NVERTER M ICROGRID C ONDITIONER
The resonance between the line and the PFC capacitor connected to Load2 can be further damped if the dual-inverter
microgrid compensator, which was proposed in the study in
[6], is adopted. As shown in Fig. 12, two inverters (a shunt
and a series) are employed for each DG in the microgrid,
and therefore, an additional degree of control freedom can be
obtained by using a second series-connected VSI along the
distribution feeder. The series VSI can be employed for further
improving resonance damping.
An obvious way to attenuate the resonance is to insert
a resistor in series with the line, which would increase the
Rline : 0 Lline ratio and damp out the resonance effectively.
This series resistance can be obtained by properly controlling
the series inverter as a virtual resistor. A consideration is, although the fundamental component dominates in the microgrid
system, under resonant conditions, the virtual resistor makes
its contribution only at the resonant frequency. Furthermore,

LI et al.: ROBUST CONTROL SCHEME FOR A MICROGRID WITH PFC CAPACITOR CONNECTED

Fig. 8.

PFC capacitor-connected system and the double-loop control of the shunt inverter.

Fig. 9.

Equivalent simplified schematic of Fig. 8.

1177

Fig. 11. Bode-magnitude plot of Vpf /Vref .

Fig. 10. Root-locus plot of Vpf /Vref .

by acting as a virtual resistor at all the frequencies, the series

inverter will absorb active power corresponding to all the
frequencies from the system, which is rechanneled through the
shunt inverter back to the microgrid to prevent a surge in the
dc-link capacitor voltage. This power circulation will introduce
additional power losses on the inverters and filter circuits.
An alternative method is to control the series inverter in
such a way that it presents zero resistance at the fundamental
frequency but a finite resistance Ri at the harmonic frequencies
similar to [7] and [8]. Therefore, the series inverter is controlled
to act as a harmonic resistor or a harmonic isolator between
the DG source and the load to suppress the resonance. Control structure of the series inverter including the fundamental
component filtering, voltage-control scheme development, and
virtual harmonic-resistor model analysis will be discussed in
the following text.
A. Retrieval of Harmonic Line-Current Components
The fundamental component of the line currents is filtered
out in the synchronous reference frame. As shown in Fig. 15,

Fig. 12. Dual-inverter compensator for the microgrid.

the line currents are first transformed from stationary abc

frame to synchronous dq frame. The synchronous frame currents idq then contain dc components representing the fundamental line current idqf and ac components representing the
harmonic idqh . By calculating the mean value of idq over one
fundamental frequency period, all the harmonic components
(multiple of 100 Hz), as well as any possible measurement dc
offset (50 Hz), become zero with only fundamental components
(dc value) remaining, as shown in Fig. 15, where f0 represents
the fundamental frequency. Subsequently, the harmonic line
currents are generated by subtracting fundamental components
from the line currents (idqh = idq idqf ). These synchronous
dq frame harmonic line currents are finally transformed back
to the stationery abc frame.
MATLAB control-system toolbox is used to analyze the
harmonic currents retrieval block with the second-order Pade
approximation of the transport delay block at f0 = 50. The

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Fig. 15.

Retrieval of line-currents harmonic components.

Fig. 16.

Bode plot of Gvl and Ri
.

Fig. 13. Bode plots of Glp = idqf /idq and Ghp = idqh /idq .

Fig. 14. Control scheme of the series inverter.

bode plots of the mean-value-calculation block in synchronous

frame idqf /idq and the whole harmonic currents retrieval filter
idqh /idq can be drawn in Fig. 13, where it can be observed
that the synchronous-frame mean-value-calculation block is
actually a low-pass filter (Glp ), which allows the fundamental
(dc) components to pass through. The harmonic currents retrieval block is a high-pass filter (Ghp ) that filters out the fundamental components of the line currents. The cutoff frequency of
idqh /idq plot is 12.1 Hz. Note that this filtering in synchronous
frame introduces no phase errors at harmonic frequencies.
B. Development and Analysis of Voltage Control
Fig. 14 shows the control diagram for the series inverter. As
shown, the line currents are first pass through a high-pass filter
(Fig. 15) to generate the harmonic line-current components
ih . Multiplying the harmonic line currents with a proportional
gain Ri , which represents the virtual resistance at the harmonic
frequency, gives the reference voltages VCref for the series
inverter (the negative sign for ih is due to the identical terminal
locations at each side of the transformer in Fig. 12).
To improve the voltage-control performance, an inner current
loop, by estimating the capacitor current using the capacitor
voltage, is added and it can be expressed as IC = Cf VC s.
In practice, the current derivative estimator is approximated
as Cf s Cf s/(1 + s/N ), where the added pole is used for

limiting the regulator gain to Cf N at high frequencies to

prevent noise amplification.
Two proportional controllers kIV and kIC are employed
along the outer voltage and inner current-control paths. These
proportional controllers can guarantee the series inverters fast
response to the reference. Since the reference voltage for the
series inverter consists only of harmonic components, proportional controllers are found to be very suitable for this
implementation as they can provide equally good control at all
the harmonic frequencies. System damping and stability margin
can be improved by properly tuning the gains kIV and kIC .
These gains are determined for a given design specification
by deriving the transfer function between series-inverter filtercapacitor voltage VC and the reference voltage VCref , which is
shown in (10) in the appendix.
Detailed tuning criteria of the controller gains can be found
in [18] and is not iterated here. Finally, bode plot of the
voltage-control transfer function Gvl in (10) is shown in Fig. 16
(with kIC = 50, kIV = 0.18, kF = 1, and kinv = 2/Vdc ). It is
clear from this bode plot that the voltage-control scheme has
good performance up to the bandwidth of 3.74 kHz, and the
gain gets rapidly attenuated at high switching frequencies. Also
shown in Fig. 16 is the bode plot of the actual virtual harmonic
resistor model with transfer function (9), which is a product
of series-connected high-pass filter, the ideal virtual harmonic
resistor, and the series-inverter voltage-control model in (10).
Ri =

VC
= Ghp Ri Gvl .
iline

(9)

LI et al.: ROBUST CONTROL SCHEME FOR A MICROGRID WITH PFC CAPACITOR CONNECTED

1179

Fig. 18. Load1 voltages with capacitance change (at t = 1.377 s).

Fig. 17. Photographs of the experimental microgrid prototype.

As shown in Fig. 16, the fundamental component is filtered

out (in synchronous reference frame), and the actual virtual
harmonic resistance is equal to the ideal value (Ri = 10) with
the bode magnitude of 20 dB at harmonic frequencies. Adding
this harmonic resistor model Ri to the line impedance, bode
magnitude plot of the resonance transfer function (8) can again
be drawn in Fig. 11. As shown, the high-frequency disturbance
is attenuated, obviously proving the effectiveness of the series
virtual harmonic resistor model for the resonance damping.

V. E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS
To verify the effectiveness of the analysis, the designed controller, and proposed damping methods, a laboratory hardware
prototype has been built with the system parameters listed
in Table I (the transformer leakage resistance and inductance
are lumped together with line impedance Rline and Lline ).
They are selected to represent those of typical distribution
systems, as given in [19]. Photos of the microgrid prototype
are shown in Fig. 17. The emulated microgrid consists of a dc
source, an insulated-gate bipolar-transistor (IGBT) interfacing
inverter (or a shunt and a series IGBT inverters with an injection transformer as a dual-inverter microgrid conditioner)
and two RL loads (Load1 and Load2 as in Figs. 1 and 17).
The inverters are digitally controlled using a dSPACE DS1103
controller card.

Fig. 19. Load2 voltages with filter-capacitor current feedback (PFC switched
on at t = 1.642 s).

The first experiment is for testing the proposed H controllers robustness. The capacitance changes from 30 to 100 F
by switching on the PFC capacitor using a three-phase backto-back SCR switch at t = 1.377 s. As shown in Fig. 18, the
H controller works well under the capacitance variations.
The little distortion of the voltages after switching on the PFC
capacitor is caused by the SCR switch (the switch is turned
on each time the phase current crosses zero; since the current
is leading the voltage by 90 , the voltage has some switching
noises at the top).
The resonance effect of switching on a PFC capacitor and
the proposed damping method is tested in the second experiment. The harmonic-disturbance source is chosen to be the
DG-system output voltages, which is programmed to have a
phase shift (60 ), a magnitude drop (phase voltage drops from
98 to 96 V), and a frequency drop (from 50 to 48 Hz), simultaneously. The control scheme with filter-capacitor current
feedback is checked first. Figs. 19 and 20 show the Load2 voltages and line currents, respectively, where both voltages and
line currents have oscillations at the resonant frequency around
350 Hz (seventh harmonic). These oscillations are finally
damped out by the line resistance. Even though the resonance

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, VOL. 43, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2007

Fig. 20. Line currents with filter-capacitor current feedback (PFC switched
on at t = 1.642 s).

Fig. 23. Load2 voltages with filter-inductor current feedback and series
compensation (PFC switched on at t = 1.589 s).

Fig. 21. Load2 voltages with filter-inductor current feedback (PFC switched
on at t = 1.632 s).

Fig. 24. Line currents with filter-inductor current feedback and series compensation (PFC switched on at t = 1.589 s).

Fig. 22. Line currents with filter-inductor current feedback (PFC switched on
at t = 1.632 s).

Fig. 25. Series voltages generated by the series inverter (PFC switched on at
t = 1.589 s).

shown here sustains only for a short period, it may cause

damaging effect to the system components or affect the control
algorithm of the microgrid if the control scheme is not robust
enough. Figs. 21 and 22 show the Load2 voltages and line

currents with filter-inductor current feedback. It is obvious

that both the peak value and sustenance time of the resonance
is reduced, proving that the filter-inductor current-feedback
method is more effective for the resonance damping.

LI et al.: ROBUST CONTROL SCHEME FOR A MICROGRID WITH PFC CAPACITOR CONNECTED

Further attenuation of the resonance by employing the dualinverter conditioner is shown in Figs. 2325. By controlling
the series inverter as a virtual harmonic resistor, the resonance
becomes almost unnoticeable, with both voltages and currents settle down rapidly, as shown in Figs. 23 and 24.
The voltages generated by the series inverter are shown in
Fig. 25. As shown, the series inverter generates harmonic
voltage during the transient under the disturbance, while it
provides zero voltage at steady state. A relatively long transient,
as shown in Fig. 25, is caused by the dynamics of highpass filter.

Coefficients in (8) for inductor current feedback

a5 = Cpf Cf Lf Lline Lload
a4 = Cpf Cf Lf Lline Rload + Cpf Cf Lf Lload Rline



Vdc
kC
+ Cpf Cf Lline Lload Rf +
2
a3 = Cf Lf Lline + Cf Lf Lload + Cpf Lf Lload



Vdc
kC kV
+ Cpf Lline Lload 1 +
2
+ Cpf Cf Lf Rline Rload



Vdc
kC
+ Cpf Cf Lline Rload Rf +
2



Vdc
kC
+ Cpf Cf Lload Rline Rf +
2



Vdc
kC + Cf Lf Rline
a2 = Cpf Cf Rline Rload Rf +
2



Vdc
kC
+ Cf Lf Rload + Cf Lline Rf +
2



Vdc
kC + Cpf Lf Rload
+ Cf Lload Rf +
2



Vdc
kC kV
+ Cpf Lline Rload 1 +
2



Vdc
kC kV
+ Cpf Lload Rline 1 +
2



Vdc
kC
+ Cpf Lload Rf +
2






Vdc
Vdc
a1 = Lf +Lline 1 +
kC kV + Lload 1 +
kC kV
2
2






Vdc
Vdc
+ Cf Rline Rf +
kC +Cf Rload Rf +
kC
2
2



Vdc
kC kV
+ Cpf Rline Rload 1 +
2



Vdc
kC
+ Cpf Rload Rf +
2






Vdc
Vdc
kC kV + Rload 1 +
kC kV
a0 = Rline 1 +
2
2

VI. C ONCLUSION
This paper has presented a detailed study of a microgrid
system with a PFC capacitor-bank connected. It revealed that
the effective filter capacitance will change due to the connection
of a PFC capacitor to a local load of a DG system. In addition,
resonance can occur in the islanding mode of the microgrid
operation, when a PFC capacitor is installed in the load at PCC.
An H controller is designed to produce performances similar
to a P+ resonant controller by having high gains at the vicinity
of line frequency, while providing more explicit robustness
in face of the filter-capacitance variation. For the resonance
situation, a thorough analysis is carried out to show that inner
filter-inductor current-feedback method is more effective for
the resonance damping than filter-capacitor current feedback.
A further damping method is also proposed, which employs
the dual-inverter microgrid conditioner. The series inverter
acting as a virtual harmonic resistor is effectively controlled.
This paper has been tested experimentally using an emulated
laboratory microgrid system.
A PPENDIX
Transfer functions in Fig. 9
G1 =

G2 =

Cf Lf s2 + Cf
Lf s + Rf +

Vdc
2 kC kV

Rf + V2dc kC s


+ 1+

Vdc
2 kC kV

Vdc
2 kC

Vdc
2 kC kV

G2 =

Lf s + Rf
Vdc
2 kC kV

G3 =

1
Lline s + Rline

G4 =

+ Rf +

Lload s + Rload
.
Cpf Lload s2 + Cpf Rload s + 1

VC
= Gvl =
VCref

Cf Lf 3
N s

1181

Vdc
kC .
2

Also, see (10) at the bottom of the page.


+ Cf Lf +

kIV kIC +kF

N

Rf
N

s + kIV kIC + kF

s2 + Cf Rf + Cf kIC +

kIV kIC +1
N

(10)
s + kIV kIC + 1

1182

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, VOL. 43, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2007

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Yun Wei Li (S04M06) received the B.Eng. degree in electrical engineering from Tianjin University, Tianjin, China, in 2002, and the Ph.D. degree
from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore,
in 2006.
He was a Visiting Scholar with the Institute of
Energy Technology, Aalborg University, Aalborg,
Denmark, in 2005. From 2006 to 2007, he was a
Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Department
of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Ryerson
University, Toronto, ON, Canada. Since 2007, he has
been an Assistant Professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer
Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada. His research
interests include distributed generation, microgrid, power quality, and electric
motor drives.

D. Mahinda Vilathgamuwa (S90M93SM99)

received the B.Sc. degree in electrical engineering
from the University of Moratuwa, Moratuwa, Sri
Lanka, in 1985, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical
engineering from Cambridge University, Cambridge,
U.K., in 1993.
In 1993, he became a Lecturer with the School
of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang
Technological University, Singapore, where he is
currently an Associate Professor. His research interests are power electronic converters, electrical drives,
and power quality. He has published more than 80 research papers in refereed
journals and conference proceedings.
Dr. Vilathgamuwa was the Cochairman of the Power Electronics and Drives
Systems Conference 2005.

Poh Chiang Loh (S01M04) received the B.Eng.

(with honors) and M.Eng. degrees in electrical engineering from the National University of Singapore,
Singapore, in 1998 and 2000, respectively, and the
Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Monash
University, Clayton, Australia, in 2002.
During the summer of 2001, he was a Visiting Scholar with the Wisconsin Electric Machines
and Power Electronics Consortium, University of
Wisconsin, Madison, where he worked on the synchronized implementation of cascaded multilevel
inverters and reduced common-mode, carrier-based, and hysteresis control
strategies for multilevel inverters. From 2002 to 2003, he was a Project Engineer
with the Defence Science and Technology Agency, Singapore, managing major
defense infrastructure projects and exploring new technologies for intelligent
defense applications. Since 2003, he has been an Assistant Professor with
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.