Decentralised consensus-based hierarchical control of a hybrid AC–DC microgrid robust to communication delays

A. Tomás-Martín, B. Kazemtabrizi, A. García-Cerrada, L. Sigrist, E.J. Bueno

International Journal of Electrical Power & Energy Systems Vol. 175, pp. 111645

Summary:

The continuous growth of distributed renewable energy resources in medium and low-voltage networks supports the case for a distributed architecture for electricity supply relying on microgrids. Whereas decentralised architectures for the primary and secondary control layers of the hierarchical control of microgrids have already been proposed, the tertiary control (economic dispatch) has been mainly formulated as a centralised control or as a distributed control that relies on a central agent to coordinate the operation between distributed generators. This paper proposes a fully decentralised hierarchical microgrid control based on a consensus-based economic dispatch problem. Unlike the proposals found in the literature, the convergence of the proposed tertiary control layer is robust to communication delays and the secondary control layer applies an incremental formulation for a seamless integration with the tertiary layer. The robustness and performance of the proposed hierarchical control are compared with those of a conventional centralised approach and a previously published decentralised approach. The proposal is validated using detailed non-linear real-time simulations, and its stability is proved by modal analysis and using Lyapunov functions.

Spanish layman's summary:

Este artículo presenta un control jerárquico totalmente descentralizado para una microrred, que incluye una innovadora capa de control terciario (despacho económico) basada en consenso, robusta a los retrasos de comunicación y una capa de control secundario incremental que considera límites de generación. El esquema propuesto se ha validado mediante simulaciones en tiempo real. 

English layman's summary:

This paper introduces a fully decentralised hierarchical control for microgrids. It features an innovative tertiary control layer (economic dispatch) based on consensus, which is robust to communication delays, and an incremental secondary control layer that accounts for generator limits. The proposed scheme has been validated through real-time simulations.

Keywords: Consensus; Decentralised control; Economic dispatch; Hierarchical control; Microgrids

JCR-JIF Impact Factor and WoS quartile: 5,300 - Q1 (2025)

DOI reference: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijepes.2026.111645

Published on paper: February 2026.

Published on-line: February 2026.

Citation:
A. Tomás-Martín, B. Kazemtabrizi, A. García-Cerrada, L. Sigrist, E.J. Bueno, "Decentralised consensus-based hierarchical control of a hybrid AC–DC microgrid robust to communication delays", International Journal of Electrical Power & Energy Systems, Vol. 175, pp. 111645, February 2026. [Online: February 2026] doi: 10.1016/j.ijepes.2026.111645