We consider the problem of designing distributed controllers to guarantee dissipativity of a networked system comprised of dynamically coupled subsystems. We require that the control synthesis is carried out locally at the subsystem-level, without explicit knowledge of the dynamics of other subsystems in the network. We solve this problem in two steps. First, we provide an approach to decompose a dissipativity condition on the networked dynamical system into equivalent conditions on the dissipativity of individual subsystems. We then use these distributed dissipativity conditions to synthesize controllers locally at the subsystem-level, using only the knowledge of the dynamics of that subsystem, and limited information about the dissipativity of the subsystems to which it is dynamically coupled. We show that the subsystem-level controllers synthesized in this manner are sufficient to guarantee dissipativity of the networked dynamical system. We also provide an approach to make this synthesis compositional, that is, when a new subsystem is added to an existing network, only the dynamics of the new subsystem, and information about the dissipativity of the subsystems in the existing network to which it is coupled are used to design a controller for the new subsystem, while guaranteeing dissipativity of the networked system including the new subsystem. Finally, we demonstrate the application of this synthesis in enabling plugand-play operations of generators in a microgrid by extending our results to networked switched systems.

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We consider the problem of designing distributed controllers to ensure passivity of a large-scale interconnection of linear subsystems connected in a cascade topology. The control design process needs to be carried out at the subsystem-level with no direct knowledge of the dynamics of other subsystems in the interconnection. We present a distributed approach to solve this problem, where subsystem-level controllers are locally designed in a sequence starting at one end of the cascade using only the dynamics of the particular subsystem, coupling with the immediately preceding subsystem and limited information from the preceding subsystem in the cascade to ensure passivity of the interconnected system up to that point. We demonstrate that this design framework also allows for new subsystems to be compositionally added to the interconnection without requiring redesign of the pre-existing controllers.

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Recent advances in distribution-level phasor measurement unit (D-PMU) technology have enabled the use of voltage phase angle measurements for direct load sharing control in distribution-level microgrid interconnections with high penetration of renewable distributed energy resources (DERs). In particular, D-PMU enabled voltage angle droop control has the potential to enhance stability and transient performance in such microgrid interconnections. However, these angle droop control designs are vulnerable to D-PMU angle measurement losses that frequently occur due to the unavailability of a global positioning system (GPS) signal for synchronization. In the event of such measurement losses, angle droop controlled microgrid interconnections may suffer from poor performance and potentially lose stability. In this paper, we propose a novel distributed mixed voltage angle and frequency droop control (D-MAFD) framework to improve the reliability of angle droop controlled microgrid interconnections. In this framework, when the D-PMU phase angle measurement is lost at a microgrid, conventional frequency droop control is temporarily used for primary control in place of angle droop control to guarantee stability. We model the microgrid interconnection with this primary control architecture as a nonlinear switched system and design distributed secondary controllers to guarantee stability of the network. Further, we incorporate performance specifications such as robustness to generation-load mismatch and network topology changes in the distributed control design. We demonstrate the performance of this control framework by simulation on a test 123-feeder distribution network.