Distribution power loss reduction of standalone DC microgrids using adaptive differential evolution-based control for distributed battery systems

With high penetrations of renewable energy sources (RES), distributed battery systems (DBS) are widely adopted in standalone DC microgrids to stabilize the bus voltages by balancing the active power. This paper presents an Adaptive Differential Evolution (ADE)-based hierarchical control for DBS to achieve online distribution power loss mitigation as well as bus voltage regulations in standalone DC microgrids. The hierarchical control comprises two layers, i.e., ADE for the secondary layer and local proportional-integral (PI) control for the primary layer. The secondary layer control provides the bus voltage references for the primary control by optimizing the fitness function, which contains the parameters of the bus voltage deviations and the power loss on the distribution lines. Simultaneously, the state-of-charge (SoC) of the battery packs are controlled by local controllers to prevent over-charge and deep-discharge. Case studies using a Real-Time Digital Simulator (RTDS) validate that the proposed ADE-based hierarchical control can effectively reduce the distribution power loss and regulate the bus voltages within the tolerances in DC microgrids.