Decentralized Safety-Critical Control of Resilient DC Microgrids with Large-Signal Stability Guarantees

Abstract: The increasing penetration of distributed energy resources and power-electronics interfaces in DC microgrids, coupled with rising cyber threats, necessitates primary controllers that are provably safe, cyber-resilient, and practical. The increasing penetration of distributed energy resources and power-electronics interfaces in DC microgrids, coupled with rising cyber threats, necessitates primary controllers that are provably safe, cyber-resilient, and practical. Conventional droop-based methods remain prevalent due to their simplicity, yet their design is largely empirical and conservative, lacking rigorous guarantees. Advanced strategies improve certain aspects, but often sacrifice scalability, robustness, or formal safety. In this work, we propose a Distributed Safety-Critical Controller (DSCC) that systematically integrates global stabilization with formal safety guarantees in a fully decentralized manner. Leveraging control barrier functions and the port-Hamiltonian system theory, the DSCC achieves scalable safe stabilization while preserving real-time implementability. High-fidelity switched-circuit simulations validate the controller's advantages under various contingencies. This framework paves the way for resilient, safety-critical, and scalable control in next-generation DC microgrids.