A Novel Load Sharing Control Technique for Paralleled Inverters

Jingtao Tan,Hua Lin, Jun Zhang and Jianping Ying

Delta Power Electronics Center
238 Minxia Road, Caolu Industry Zone, Pudong, Shanghai, 201209, China
Tel: 86-21-58635678, Fax: 86-21-58630003, Email tan,jingtao@delta,com.cn

Abstract -A new control technique have been developed,
which allows paralleled inverters to share linear or nonlinear
load in a distributed ac power supply system. All paralleled
inverters have the Same power reference, and are forced the
output power to follow the same reference by using a PI
controller in each inverter unit, so that all paralleled inverters
can share the Same output power. The approach has
significant advantages over existing methods, including the
ability to improve reliability and reduce interconnection bus.
Principle and scheme of the load-sharing technique is
analyzed. The experimental resdlts of B three-unit prototype
system show that the proposed scheme is correct.
I. INTRODUCTION
novel load sharing control technique for parallel inverters is
put forward.
11. ANALYSIS OF POWR FLOW CONTROLPRINCIPLE
A. ConvenlionalPower Flow Confrol Theory
A model of two inverters parallel connection is shown
in Fig.1, in which the inverter connects with the load via a
filtering inductance. As well know, the complex power at
the terminal vo in Fig.1 due to the ith ( i=l,or2) inverter is
given by[''

Continuous power supply systems have become

increasingly important, especially for applications with
sensitive and critical loads. A common practice to obtain a
continuous power supply is to use a centralized
unintempted power supply (UPS) system. This, however, Equations (I) and (2) indicate that if power angle is
is inflexible and can he unreliable for distributed loads. As small, the real power flow 4 i:; mostly dependent on the
the system load grows, the UPS needs to be replaced with a
higher capacity one. Also, if the U P S fails, the entire power angle p i . On the contrary, the reactive power flow
system is affected. Q, is mainly influenced by the amplitude of the inverter
The reliability as well as the power capability of the
supply system can he increased by replacing a single UPS voltage V, . This is a general conclusion on power flow
unit with multiple, smaller UPS units in parallel, resulting control in the power supplies system.
in a so-called distributed power system (DPS). A DPS has
many desirable features such as expandability, modularity,
maintainability, redundancy, and increased reliability. The
technically challenging aspect of the DPS, however, is the
load sharing among the parallel-connected inverters.
Without a proper control scheme, each unit cannot share
the load properly. Also, the load sharing is affected by non-
uniformity of the units, component tolerances and I I
variations in the connecting line impedances.
Although many methods of operating inverters in Fig.1 Principle Diagram of Inverter Parallel Connection
parallel can be found in the literature, there is yet no
satisfactory method to achieve a truly distributed power Therefore, according the above conclusion, in order to
supply system ['"I. We think a good DPS should meet the control the power flow of inverter units in the parallel
demands as follows: system, we should take meawnss to control the amplitude
(1) Circulation current between paralleled inverters is and phase angle of the output voltage of all inverter units
almost zero; effectively. Fig2 and Fig.3 are two kinds of system, which
(2) Dynamic and static performance of the DPS is no can meet these demands. Fig2 is an open loop control
lower than the single UPS, such as low THD (total structure while Fig.3 is a clo:ied loop control structure.
harmonic distortion) and precision of output voltage; Obviously, whether in open or in close control structure, to
(3) High reliable parallel configuration. change the amplitude VmJ and phase angle @, of the
As will be discussed in details by following sections, a

0-7803-7754-0/03/$17.00 82003 IEEE 1432

voltage reference, can control the amplitude V, and phase
angle p i of the output voltage of the ith inverter.
Fig.2 Parallel system of inverter units using open Iwp contml
"QY
Fig3 Parallel syStem of inverter units with the output voltage as
feedback
Based on the above analysis, a general method on
power flow control of inverter parallel system can be
summarized as follows:
(1): To change the phase angle 'ZJi of the voltage
reference, can control the real power flow e from the ifh
inverter.
(2): To change the amplitude V,, of the voltage
reference, can control the reactive power flow Q, from the
ith inverter.
B. ModifiedPower Flow Control Theory
High performance inverters have some important
features, such as high voltage regulation precision, and low
total harmonic distortion with various loads. Thus, the
inverters are typically operated under feedback control to
realize the desired output waveform.
However, it should he noted that the load voltage is
usually used as feedback to construct closed loop control in
the inverter. Thus, a parallel system of inverter units is
shown in Fig.4. It is distinct from the parallel system shown
in Fig.3, in which the output voltage of the inverter is used
as the feedback.
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INVETER INVETER
1 2
.--.*,i
I
Fig.4 Parallel SyStem of invencr units with the load voltage
feedback
Fig.5 Parallel system of inverter uni$ with current control Imp
Now, the problem is how to control the power flow Of
inverter unit in Fig.4. Although, no matter what control
strategy is adopted in Fig.3, the conclusion about the
relationship between voltage reference and power flow is
unchangeable, different conclusions will get when different
control strategies is used in Fig.4.
Load voltage and inductor current dual-bops control is
a typical control strategy for inverters. Parallel system of
inverter units based on the control strategy is shown in
FigS. Power flow control principle on the parallel system is
discussed as follows.
In Fig.5, the IVR is the instantaneous voltage regulator,
which enforces the load voltage to follow the voltage
reference tightly. The output of IVR is supplied as the
inductor current reference of the CR. The CR is the current
regulator, which enforces the inductor current to follow the
inductor current reference tightly.
Generally, the load voltage v, and the voltage
references of the ith inverter vmln
can he expressed as:
v, = V,, sin wt
~ sin( cot
v , =~ V,eln + 'ZJ ")
Where: w is the angle frequency of the load voltage,
'ZJn is the phase difference between the voltage reference
of the nth inverter unit and the output voltage, v, is the
amplitude of the load voltage and v,, is the amplitude of A. Disiribuied Logic Confguraiion
the iih voltage reference. Parallel system of inverter units has different kinds of
In additional, to simplify the analysis, some parallel configuration, such is the central control
assumptions are given: configuration, the maser-slave control configuration, the
( I ) The N R is a proportional controller; the distributed logic control contiguntion and independent
proportional gain is K, . control configuration. Considering the cost, reliability and
complexity of implementation,, the distributed logic
(2) "he CR has very perfect performance, so that the configuration shown in Fig.6 is adopted in the paper. It has
inductor current can follow the current reference only two interconnection buses to transfer the related
completely. information among all the paralleled inverter units. The

n+
Thus, the mathematical model of the nth inverter unit in phase bus is used to transfer the phase angle information, so
Fia.5 can he exmessed as:
I that the voltage references of all the paralleled inverter
+,i = K , *[V,, *sin(ui+@.)-V, *sinoil units have the same frequency and phase angle. The power

1
(3) bus is used to transfer the active power reference
information, so that the voltage references of all the
= 54"
ILn (4)
paralleled inverter units have the same active power
From the equation (3) and (4). we have: reference.
ai,"-K,sin(wf+@,)
--
aVM"

Obviously, when the amplitude increment of the voltage

reference is AV,+, the increment of the inductor current
A& can he expressed as:
Ai,," LY,AV,~/, sin( 01 + @ " )
= (7)
Usually, Q n is very little, so the Airefiin equation (7)
predominately produce active current in the load voltage
vo .
I NVETE

Similarly, when the phase angle increment of the

voltage reference is A@", the increment of the inductor
current A i , can he expressed as:
Ai,@ = K,Vamp,AQ cos( 01 +Qn) (8)
I Load
So the Ai,+ in equation (8) predominately produce Fig.6 Parallel syslem of inverter based on dirhibuted logic
configuration
reactive current in the load voltage vo .
Based on the above analysis, in Fig.5, a general method B. Load Sharing Conhol Scheme
on power flow control of inverter parallel systcm as follows:
Control block diagram for realizing the proposed load
(1) To change 'the phase angle Qi of the voltage
sharing control scheme is shown in Fig. 7. It is augmented
reference can control the reactive power flow Qi from the on the dual-loops inductor current control scheme shown in
ifh inverter. Fig. 5.
Rm is the real-means-square (RMS) voltage regulator,
(2) To change the amplitude V,, of the voltage
which ensures the RMS of the load voltage to have high
reference can control the active power flow 6 from the iih precision. The output of RVR is regard as the active power
inverter. reference P, , which is transferred to the power bus to get
the average value of all the active power reference in the
111. LOAD SHARING SCHEME paralleled system.

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(9)
PR is the active power regulator. is supplied as
the input of the active power regulator. The output of PR is
used as the amplitude of the voltage reference. As
discussed in the above, to change the amplihlde of the
voltage reference can control the active power flow of the
inverter unit; so, the active power regulator can control the
output of active power P,+ to follow the active power
Active Power Bus
Fig.7 Control block diagram of ule load-sharingscheme
All the units transfer their Phase angle value to the
phase bus respectively. The phase bus extracts the
maximum value of the phase angles and transfer back to the
inverter units as the input of PLL. Thus, the PLL ensure the
voltage phase reference is the same in the paralleled system
and when the active power is sharing, the reactive power is
almost sharing in the paralleled system too.
(3) Adaptive control of the load voltage feedback
coefficient
In the paralleled system, all the controllen are
implemented by s o h a r e , so the control parameters
between parallel inverter modules has no difference. But, in
general, it has differences bemeen System panmeters of all
the paralleled units, such as the load voltage feedback
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reference ehWeeffectively.
Hence, the operational principle of the proposed load-
sharing scheme can be expressed as follow:
(1) Active Power sharing: Using the same active power
reference.
All the paralleled units own the same active power
reference p,h,. PR is used to control the output of active
power to follow the power reference. Thus, all the units
output the same active power.
(2) Reactive Power sharing: Using PLL (phase locked
loop) control
coefficient K,,, , which relies on the parameters of the
hardware. Due to the disagreement of the coefficient,
the load is the Same One, the
feedback of the unit is disagreement. Hence, the RMS
values v,
of the load voltage feedback between all units
are disagreement. It is possible that, the error e, in some
units is positive and e, in the other units is negative when
V, o VIn.This means it is impossible to let all the error
e, equal zero in the same time. Because there exists an
integrator Sectionin the RVR controller, the R V will
~ be in
the positive saturation state or in the negative saturation respectively.
state. Thus, the system cannot run in a right state. It is obvious that the paralleled system has not only
To overcome this problem, an adaptive controller is good current-sharing performancm: hut also low THD and
adopted. The adaptive control law is: high precision of load voltage.
Km = Kshme (eh,
-n' ) + (10)
K , is an adaptive controller. K,,, is the
proportional coefficient of the adaptive controller. The
product of K , and K,, is used as the actual feedback
coefficient. Obviously, when Chum
> P, , the actual
feedback coefficient is less than K , . On the other hand,
when eh, < Pn, the actual feedback coefficient is bigger
than K , . Using the control law will ensure the system to
mn in the right state.

RESULTS
IV. EXPERMENTAL
Fig.8 Static response of the parallel syskm wiul full resistive load
In order to verify the proposed load-sharing scheme, a
parallel system with three inverter units has been built. The
control unit is implemented based on TMS320F240. The
parameters of the unit list as in Table 1.

Table 1: Parameters of inverter unit

Some experimental results are shown in Fig3 to Fig.15,

where uo is the load voltage and i, ,i2 and i, are the load
currents of the three inverter units respectively.

A. Static Performance

Fig.8 and 9 are the static responses of the parallel

system with the full resistive load and the full rectifier load
respectively. In Fig3 and 9, the load currents i, ,i, and i3
are almost the same. Hence, the proposed scheme has good
load-sharing performance. Under different load conditions,
the THD of load voltage, the RMS precision of load voltage
and the precision of load current sharing defined in
Equation (1 1) are shown in Fig.10.
AI%=- AI."= x 100% = I L X -1-1 xloo% a ax a m E% 1m lax l a

I, I,, Fig.10 Characteristics of the parallel system with resistive load

(11) B. Dynumic Pe$ormance
Where I,, I, and I,o. is the RMS value of the actual
load current of a certain inverter, the expected load current
Fig.12 and 13 are the dynamic responses of the parallel
(average load current) and the rated load current,

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system when abruptly increasing the load from null to full

Fig.12 Dynamic response ofthe paralleled system with the resistive load
abruptly increasing fromnull 10 full Fig.14 Dynamic response of the parallel system with the resistive load
abruplly decreasing from full to null

Fig.13 Dynamic response of the parallel system with Le rectifier load

abruptly decreasing 6om null to full
Fig.14 and are the responses Of the Fig.15 Dymamic xspome afthe paallel system with therectifierload
paralleled system when abruptly decreasing the load from abruptly decreasing from full IO null
full resistive load and the full rectifier load to null
respectively. Fig.12 to Fig.15 show that even if the load REFERENCES
changing abruptly, the parallel system still has good
current-sharing performance. [I]Xie LiHua, Su YanMin, “Control o f Inverter Parallel Operation”,
Power Electronics, Vo1.34, No.4, pp.1-3.
121 David I Perreadt, Roben L Sclden and John G Kassakian,
V. CONCLUSIONS “Frsquency-Based Current-Shanng Techniques for Parallcl Power
Converten’, IEEE Transactions on Power Elecmnicr 1998, Vo1.13,
A novel current sharing scheme for paralleled inverter is N o 4 pp.626-634.
proposed, The parallel system has characteristics as follows: PI Heim Van Der Braeck, Ulrich Boeh, “A Simple Mehod for Parallel
Operation oflnverten”, IEEE 1998, pp.144-150.
(I): Reliable configuration [4l Yu Meng, ShanXu Dum, Yong Kang and Jian Chen, “Research on
(2): Simple communication Voltage Source Inverten With Wireless Parallel Operation”.
(3): Good effect of current sharing [5l A Tuladhar, H Jin, T Unger and K Much, “Parallel Operation o f
(4): Low THD with nonlinear load Single Phase lnvener Modules with No Control Intercome~tims”,
IEEE 1997, pp.94-100.
( 5 ) : High precision of load voltage RMS

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