Universal Droop Control of Inverters With Different Types of Output Impedance

Droop control is a well-known strategy for the parallel operation of inverters. However, the droop control strategy changes its form for inverters with different types of output impedance, and so far, it is impossible to operate inverters with inductive and capacitive output impedances in parallel. In this paper, it is shown that there exists a universal droop control principle for inverters with output impedance having a phase angle between -(π/2) rad and (π/2) rad. It takes the form of the droop control for inverters with resistive output impedance (R-inverters). Hence, the robust droop controller recently proposed in the literature for R-inverters actually provides one way to implement such a universal droop controller that can be applied to all practical inverters without the need of knowing the impedance angle. The small-signal stability of an inverter equipped with the universal droop controller is analyzed, and it is shown to be stable when the phase angle of the output impedance changes from -(π/2) rad to (π/2) rad. Both real-time simulation results and experimental results from a test rig consisting of an R-inverter, an L-inverter, and a C-inverter operated in parallel are presented to validate the proposed strategy.