State-of-charge balancing strategy of battery energy storage units with a voltage balance function for a Bipolar DC mircrogrid

For an islanded bipolar DC microgrid, a special problem of making the better compromise between a state-of-charge (SOC) balance among multiple battery energy storage units (MBESUs) in positive and negative polar, and bus voltage balance, should be considered. In order to solve this problem, three kinds of the simplified load equivalent circuits on the different operation status of voltage balancer (VB) are established; based on these equivalent circuits, the SOC unbalance mechanism is analyzed and the rules of SOC deviation and voltage unbalance factor are summarized, which are influenced by micro-source and load changing; then a SOC automatic balancing strategy among MBESUs with a voltage balance function is proposed in this paper. The proposed controlling strategy takes into consideration the energy flow relationship under various working conditions; with the aim of controlling the equilibrium time and energy flow direction of SOC, creates a SOC balancing power bridge with the SOC deviation as the main control variable; adopts the adaptive virtual resistance algorithm for both positive and negative BESUs according to the variation rule of the SOC deviation. When the SOC deviation is significant, according to the net power difference of the system, the values of the virtual resistances can be adaptively adjusted to alter the operation mode of BESUs and the VB control strategy is also adjusted so as to ensure the stable running of the system and accelerate the SOC balancing speed via maximizing the balancing power by VB. In order to decrease the voltage unbalance on SOC balancing, apart from adding bus voltage recovery control to the positive and negative batteries, the virtual resistances are related to the SOC deviation when the SOC deviation is slight. The simulation results demonstrate that the control strategy proposed in this paper can quickly realize SOC balancing when the SOC deviation is significant, has superior equilibrium performance as load and micro-source power varying when the SOC deviation is slight, and is also feasible in decreasing the bus voltage unbalance. •A SOC balancing control strategy for energy storage units with a voltage balance function is proposed.•An analysis of SOC trends is carried out in response to the power changing of loads and micro-source.•An adaptive virtual resistances algorithm is coordinated with the control strategy of VB to accelerate the balance process.•Adaptive virtual resistances and a bus voltage recovery