Autonomous Distributed Control of Residential Microgrids: A Simulation-Based Comparative Study

This study investigates two distributed control schemes for residential DC microgrids: an autonomous distributed cooperative control based on the state of charge (SoC) of battery-driven DC/DC converters acting as voltage sources, and an autonomous decentralized control based solely on local feeder voltage, enabled by a battery-integrated feeder configuration. A DC microgrid model consisting of five houses was constructed in MATLAB/Simulink, incorporating PV panels, small wind turbines, typical Japanese household load profiles, EV charging, and realistic meteorological data in Sendai, Japan, for the year of 2023. The cooperative control scheme based on the SoC effectively stabilized feeder voltage, suppressed surplus renewable generation, and reduced grid interaction. The decentralized scheme also maintained stable feeder voltage without device-to-device communication. In both schemes, houses near the grid interconnection point experienced more frequent battery cycling, indicating the need for larger battery capacities at those locations to equalize the overall battery lifetime. Simulations demonstrated that, under the specific configurations and meteorological conditions evaluated, installing a 3.5 kW PV system and a 20 kWh battery per house supplies over 80% of the annual consumption from renewable energy and enables sustained islanded operation during disasters under reduced household load conditions, although temporary energy shortages may occur under adverse winter conditions. These results offer valuable guidelines for designing environmentally sustainable and resilient residential microgrids.