DC microgrids will be an important part of the future electrical power systems, i.e., smart grids. Similar to the other power systems, one of the important issues of dc microgrids is the fulfillment of the optimal power sharing. In this paper, a practical, modular, robust, highly reliable, autonomous, distributed, optimal power sharing method, namely the ODCPS (optimal dc power sharing) method, is proposed for radial dc microgrids with different numbers of distributed energy sources. The presented power sharing method inherently considers the power loss in its optimization process. Furthermore, the ODCPS method necessitates the least telecommunication. Here, to determine the proper amounts of the parameters of the proposed power sharing method, a novel technique calculating the nodal prices in radial dc microgrids is also presented. Although the success of the ODCPS method is demonstrated through the analytical analyses carried out in this paper, finally, the remarkable performance of the proposed power sharing method is described by the simulation results too. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.