Decentralized plug-and-play control of grid-forming converters for resilient and scalable AC microgrids: a passivity-based unified architecture
Abstract
In low-inertia AC microgrids, voltage formation, frequency support, power sharing, and disturbance rejection are performed by grid-forming (GFM) converters. Current systems often design these functions individually for a fixed, cooperatively tuned converter population. Adding, removing, or losing a unit requires retuning, which may jeopardize stability. We present a generic decentralized plug-and-play (PnP) design for all grid-forming (GFM) converters by including the same kernel, i.e., droop primary regulation, adaptive virtual impedance, sparse consensus-based secondary restoration, and trust-weighted resilient coordination, under a local passivity-based admission test. Under explicitly stated assumptions (quasi-stationary lossy lines, a feasible equilibrium, a connected electrical network and a bounded admission rate), we prove that a converter with normalized passivity index exceeding a strictly positive margin can be admitted or removed without neighbor retuning, that stability is preserved during the finite-time admission ramp and not only at its end points, and that the conductive (R/X) coupling of real feeders enters the test as a bounded, locally computable defect. The same certificate bounds the perturbation that false-data-injection (FDI) attacks can cause through the trust-weighted consensus, with an explicit relation between attack magnitude, residual threshold, trust weight, and perturbation. Validation is software-only: a detailed averaged three-converter Simulink model, a small-signal model with the exact lossy Jacobian for N = 2−128 converters, several electrical and communication graphs, heterogeneous ratings and lines, sequential and simultaneous multi-unit events, a documented Monte-Carlo campaign and a 15-scenario FDI campaign. In the detailed model, admitting a converter causes a peak PCC voltage deviation of 1.79% (settling in 58 ms), and the harmonic kernel (current feed-forward plus selective resonant feedback of the PCC voltage) lowers PCC voltage THD from 9.19% to 3.33%, within the 5% limit. The computed minimum passivity index during admission is 0.723 over N = 2−8 and remains between 0.723 and 0.885 up to N = 128 ; the Monte-Carlo violation probability is 0.002 for design tolerances ( M = 1000 ). Real-time hardware-in-the-loop testing was not performed and is identified as future work.
Related
- Resilient Decentralized Preconditioned Stochastic Proximal Optimization with Gradient Sketching over Time-Varying Networks
- Decentralized Smart-Hive IoT Architecture and Open Field Telemetry Dataset
- A scalable process aware routing architecture for resilient wireless communication in industrial and control networks
- From Seedling Architecture to Grain: Linking Root and Shoot Traits with Yield Potential for Climate-Resilient Wheat Breeding
- Multi-Layered Recursive Cyber Deception Architecture Powered by True Cosmic-Ray Inter-Particle Randomized Shuffling (Particle-on-Particle) over Decentralized mDOM Meshes
BibTeX
@article{chaturvedi2026decentralized,
title = {{Decentralized plug-and-play control of grid-forming converters for resilient and scalable AC microgrids: a passivity-based unified architecture}},
author = {Abhay Chaturvedi and Dinesh Kumar Nishad and Kamlesh Kumar Bharti and Raghvendra Tiwari and Molla Addisu Mossie},
journal = {Scientific Reports},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.1038/s41598-026-76716-1},
url = {https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-026-76716-1},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Decentralized plug-and-play control of grid-forming converters for resilient and scalable AC microgrids: a passivity-based unified architecture
AU - Abhay Chaturvedi
AU - Dinesh Kumar Nishad
AU - Kamlesh Kumar Bharti
AU - Raghvendra Tiwari
AU - Molla Addisu Mossie
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/28
JO - Scientific Reports
DO - 10.1038/s41598-026-76716-1
UR - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-026-76716-1
AB - In low-inertia AC microgrids, voltage formation, frequency support, power sharing, and disturbance rejection are performed by grid-forming (GFM) converters. Current systems often design these functions individually for a fixed, cooperatively tuned converter population. Adding, removing, or losing a unit requires retuning, which may jeopardize stability. We present a generic decentralized plug-and-play (PnP) design for all grid-forming (GFM) converters by including the same kernel, i.e., droop primary regulation, adaptive virtual impedance, sparse consensus-based secondary restoration, and trust-weighted resilient coordination, under a local passivity-based admission test. Under explicitly stated assumptions (quasi-stationary lossy lines, a feasible equilibrium, a connected electrical network and a bounded admission rate), we prove that a converter with normalized passivity index exceeding a strictly positive margin can be admitted or removed without neighbor retuning, that stability is preserved during the finite-time admission ramp and not only at its end points, and that the conductive (R/X) coupling of real feeders enters the test as a bounded, locally computable defect. The same certificate bounds the perturbation that false-data-injection (FDI) attacks can cause through the trust-weighted consensus, with an explicit relation between attack magnitude, residual threshold, trust weight, and perturbation. Validation is software-only: a detailed averaged three-converter Simulink model, a small-signal model with the exact lossy Jacobian for N = 2−128 converters, several electrical and communication graphs, heterogeneous ratings and lines, sequential and simultaneous multi-unit events, a documented Monte-Carlo campaign and a 15-scenario FDI campaign. In the detailed model, admitting a converter causes a peak PCC voltage deviation of 1.79% (settling in 58 ms), and the harmonic kernel (current feed-forward plus selective resonant feedback of the PCC voltage) lowers PCC voltage THD from 9.19% to 3.33%, within the 5% limit. The computed minimum passivity index during admission is 0.723 over N = 2−8 and remains between 0.723 and 0.885 up to N = 128 ; the Monte-Carlo violation probability is 0.002 for design tolerances ( M = 1000 ). Real-time hardware-in-the-loop testing was not performed and is identified as future work.
SN - 2045-2322
ER -