Distributed secondary frequency control in microgrids: Robustness and steady-state performance in the presence of clock drifts

Microgrids are distributed systems with high share of inverter-interfaced renewable energy sources where stable and reliable system operation is realized by suitably controlling the inverters. In this work, we focus on secondary frequency control, which is an important ancillary service provided by the inverters. In the literature on secondary frequency control, the effect of clock drifts has often been neglected. However, clock drifts are practically unavoidable parameter uncertainties in inverter-based microgrids and we show that the most commonly employed distributed secondary frequency controllers exhibit performance deteriorations when taking clock drifts explicitly into consideration. Motivated by this, we propose a novel alternative control law called generalized distributed averaging integral (GDAI) control, which achieves the secondary control objectives of steady-state accurate frequency restoration and proportional power sharing in the presence of clock drifts. In addition, we derive a sufficient tuning criterion in the form of a set of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) which guarantees robust stability of the closed-loop equilibrium point in the presence of uncertain clock drifts. Finally, our analysis is validated extensively via simulation with comprehensive comparisons to other related distributed control approaches. (C) 2019 European Control Association. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.