Effect of Power Line Communication On DC Grid Stability

Power line communication is becoming an attractive solution for smart grid communication in terms of cost and decreasing complexity of infrastructure. It ranges from data transmission to grid management. In this paper, the use of power line communication in DC grid for control is discussed. Different approaches has been previously used to make the grid impedance time invariant for power line communication and resistive to converter noises. However, they do not consider the effect of those approaches on stability of the grid during different load conditions, especially when the grid is dominated by constant power loads. The use of decoupling inductors at each source and load in a DC grid is one of the common approaches. The stability issues in a DC grid for household application are discussed using Matlab Simulink. Resistive and constant power loads will be used for comparison. Using decoupling inductors introduces oscillation in the DC grid which may lead to system collapse depending on the value of decoupling inductors, the grid capacitance and the complexity of the DC grid.