Practical evaluation of droop and consensus control of distributed electric springs for both voltage and frequency regulation in microgrid

Electric spring (ES) was originally proposed as a distributed demand-side management (DSM) technology for stabilizing power distribution network in the presence of intermittent power generation without using communication. This paper explores the practical use of consensus control for a cluster of electric springs (ESs) through a WiFi communication layer for new functions not previously realized in practice. This approach can be considered as a form of DSM for smart grid technology. A novel consensus control is introduced to enable distributed ES circuits to provide local voltage and system frequency regulations in a microgrid with shared responsibility of active and reactive power compensation. The practical implementation details of consensus control for a cluster of ESs are addressed. New plug-and-play functions of ESs are practically demonstrated for the first time under consensus control. Practical results indicate that droop control (without communication) and consensus control (with communication) are complementary. Under normal condition when the communication network is available, distributed ESs can perform with shared power compensation efforts based on consensus control. If the communication network fails, ESs can revert to perform under droop control