Unbalanced and nonlinear loads connected to microgrids (MG) with local distributed energy resources (DERs) are two of the leading causes of power quality problems. Nonlinearloads introduce voltage and current harmonics, and single-phase loads can cause voltage and current imbalances in a three-phase network. This paper presents a hierarchical control scheme for voltage-controlled photovoltaic (PV) inverters with unbalanced and nonlinear loads in micro-grids. The hierarchical control consists of primary control and voltage compensation control(VCC) and a DC voltage regulator (VR). The primary control scheme controls active and reactive power-sharing and the VCCregulates the unbalanced voltage and harmonics distortion. The effectiveness of the scheme is verified using Opal-RT real-time simulation and experimentally using control hardware-in-the-loop. The voltage distortion at the point of common coupling (PCC)decreased from 6.38 percent to 1.91 percent after compensation, while the unbalanced and harmonic loads are shared proportionally among the DG units.
The need to restore and keep the grid running or fast restoration during emergencies such as extreme weather conditions is quite apparent given the reliance of other infrastructure on electricity. One promising approach to electricity restoration is the use of locally available energy resources to restore the system to form isolated microgrids. In this paper, we present a black start restoration method that forms islanded microgrids after a blackout. The master DGs in the formed microgrids are coordinated to work together through droop control. Several constraints, including incentive-based de…
This paper addresses the problem of distributed secondary voltage control of an islanded microgrid (MG) from a cyber-physical perspective. An event-triggered distributed model predictive control (DMPC) scheme is designed to regulate the voltage magnitude of each distributed generators (DGs) in order to achieve a better trade-off between the control performance and communication and computation burdens. By using two novel event triggering conditions that can be easily embedded into the DMPC for the application of MG control, the computation and communication burdens are significantly reduced wi…
This paper proposes a distributed secondary voltage control method based on extended state Kalman-Bucy filter (ESKBF) and fast terminal sliding mode (FTSM) control for the resilient operation of an islanded microgrid (MG) with inverter-based distributed generations (DGs). To tackle the co-existence of multiple uncertainties, a unified modelling framework is proposed to represent the set of different types of disturbances, including parameter perturbation, measurement noise, and immeasurably external variables, by an extended state method. Kalman-Bucy filter is then applied to accurately estima…
This paper proposes a new distributed consensus-based control method for voltage and frequency control of fully inverter-based islanded microgrids (MGs). The proposed method includes the active power sharing in voltage control to improve the reactive power sharing accuracy and thus generalizes some existing secondary frequency and voltage control methods. Firstly, frequency is regulated by distributed secondary frequency control. Secondly, voltage is regulated by distributed average voltage control and decentralized individual voltage control. It offers a tunable trade-off between voltage regu…
Voltage and frequency control in an islanded AC microgrid (ImGs) amount to stabilizing an a priori unknown ImG equilibrium induced by loads and changes in topology. This paper puts forth a unified control framework which, while guaranteeing such stability, allows for modular ImGs interconnecting multiple subsystems, that is, dynamic RLC lines, nonlinear constant impedance, current, power (ZIP) and exponential (EXP) loads, and inverter-based distributed generation units (DGUs) controlled with different types of primary controllers. The underlying idea of the framework is based one equilibrium-i…
Hierarchical architectures stacking primary, secondary, and tertiary layers are widely employed for the operation and control of islanded DC microgrids (DCmGs), composed of Distribution Generation Units (DGUs), loads, and power lines. However, a comprehensive analysis of all the layers put together is often missing. In this work, we remedy this limitation by setting out a top-to-bottom hierarchical control architecture. Decentralized voltage controllers attached to DGUs form our primary layer. Governed by an MPC--based Energy Management System (EMS), our tertiary layer generates optimal power …
A decentralized scalable approach to voltage control of DC islanded microgrids
Università degli Studi di Pavia（帕维亚大学）；United Technologies Research Center Ireland（联合技术研究中心爱尔兰）；Institute of Energy Technology, Aalborg University（奥尔堡大学能源技术研究所）
The proliferation of inverter-based generation and advanced sensing, controls, and communication infrastructure have facilitated the accelerated deployment of microgrids. A coordinated network of microgrids can maintain reliable power delivery to critical facilities during extreme events. Low inertia offered by the power electronics interfaced energy resources however, can present significant challenges to ensuring stable operation of the microgrids. In this work, distributed small-signal stability conditions for inverter-based microgrids are developed that involve the droop controller paramet…
COVID-19 has a vast impact on the power systems considering the customers demand and human resources. During this situation, the utilization of microgrids (MGs) may help the power systems balance the generation and consumption of power, which leads to customer satisfaction. In this paper, the optimal power scheduling of energy sources in an islanded MG by considering the upside risk (UR) is proposed for the very first time. The intended islanded MG consists of various sources such as wind turbine (WT), photovoltaic (PV), diesel generator (DGR), and battery. The goals of this work are minimizin…
Plug-and-play and coordinated control for bus-connected AC islanded microgrids
United Technologies Research Center Ireland（联合技术研究院爱尔兰）；Dipartimento di Ingegneria Industriale e dell’Informazione, Università degli Studi di Pavia（帕维亚大学工业与信息技术系）；Institute of Energy Technology, Aalborg University（奥尔堡大学能源技术研究所）；Automatic Control Laboratory, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)（洛桑联邦理工学院自动控制实验室）
A Distributed Scalable Architecture using L1 Adaptive Controllers for Primary Voltage Control of DC Microgrids
University College Cork（科克大学）；United Technologies Research Centre Ireland Ltd（联合技术研究院爱尔兰有限公司）；MaREI-SFI Research Centre, University College Cork（科克大学马雷伊-科学基金会研究中心）
An islanded microgrid supplied by multiple distributed energy resources (DERs) often employs droop-control mechanisms for power sharing. Because microgrids do not include inertial elements, and low pass filtering of noisy measurements introduces lags in control, droop-like controllers may pose significant stability concerns. This paper aims to understand the effects of droop-control on the small-signal stability and transient response of the microgrid. Towards this goal, we present a compendium of results on the small-signal stability of droop-controlled inverter-based microgrids with heteroge…
In this paper, we investigate the stability properties of inverter-based microgrids by establishing the possible presence of the so-called critical clusters - groups of inverters with their control settings being close to the stability boundary. For this, we consider the spectrum of the weighted admittance matrix of the network and show that its distinct eigenvalues correspond to inverter clusters, whose structure can be revealed by the corresponding eigenvector. We show that the maximum eigenvalue of the weighted admittance matrix corresponds to the cluster, closest to stability boundary. We …
In this paper, we propose a minimax model predictive control (MPC)-based energy management system that is robust with respect to uncertainties in renewable infeed and load. The MPC formulation includes a model of low-level droop control with saturation at the power and energy limits of the units. Robust MPC-based energy management systems tend to under-utilize the renewable energy sources to guarantee safe operation. In order to mitigate this effect, we further consider droop control of renewable energy sources. For a microgrid with droop-controlled units, we show that enhancing droop feedback…
This paper presents a method for controlling the voltage of inverter-based Microgrids by proposing a new scale-free distributed cooperative controller. The communication network is modeled by a general time-varying graph which enhances the resilience of the proposed protocol against communication link failure, data packet loss, and fast plug and play operation in the presence of arbitrarily communication delays. The proposed scale-free distributed cooperative controller is independent of any information about the communication system and the size of the network (i.e., the number of distributed…
Superimposed sequence quantities have been relied on for years to provide pure fault components for various applications in protection schemes. In more recent times, they have been employed in various solutions to the challenges introduced by integration of distributed generation in distribution systems. To improve the overall reliability of protection schemes deployed in such active distribution networks, this paper evaluates a new approach for detecting unbalanced faults using negative sequence quantities. A proposed superimposed negative sequence admittance element is validated using simula…
Inverter-interfaced microgrids results in challenges when designing protection systems. Traditional time-overcurrent, admittance, and differential protection methods are unsuitable on account of lack of fault current, excessively short lines, or a prohibitive number of protective devices needing to be installed. Current practice is to force all inverters to shut down during fault conditions, weakening resilience and reducing reliability. Dynamic state estimation (DSE), which has been explored for both line protection and load bus protection before, is a potential solution to these challenges t…
A new method for stability assessment of inverter-based microgrids is presented in this paper. It leverages the notion of critical clusters -- a localized group of inverters with parameters having the highest impact on the system stability. The spectrum of the weighted network admittance matrix is proposed to decompose a system into clusters and rank them based on their distances from the stability boundary. We show that each distinct eigenvalue of this matrix is associated with one cluster, and its eigenvectors reveal a set of inverters that participate most in the corresponding cluster. The …
This paper developed a novel control approach for the sparse and safe frequency regulation for inverter intensive microgrids (MGs). In the scenario, the inverters and external grids are expected to reach a synchronized desired frequency under regulations. To this end, the active power set-point acting as a control from a high-level controller is designed while considering two important performance metrics "sparsity" and "safety", which are to reduce the information exchange between controllers and ensure that the frequency keeps in safety regions during the whole operation process. Our propose…
A new method for the stability assessment of inverter-based microgrids is presented in this paper. Directly determining stability boundaries by searching the multidimensional space of inverters' droop gains is a computationally prohibitive task. Instead, we build a certified stability region by utilizing a generalized Laplacian matrix eigenvalues, which are a measure of proximity to stability boundary. We establish an upper threshold for the eigenvalues that determines the stability boundary of the entire system and demonstrate that this value depends only on the network's R/X ratio but does n…
The rapid increase of distributed energy resources has led to the widespread deployment of microgrids. These flexible and efficient local energy grids are able to operate in both grid-connected mode and islanded mode; they are interfaced to the main power system by a fast semiconductor switch and commonly make use of inverter-interfaced generation. This paper focuses on inverter interfaced microgrids, which present a challenge for protection as they do not provide the high short-circuit current necessary for conventional time-overcurrent protection. The application of admittance relaying for t…
This letter proposes a general decentralized control of cascaded inverters-power factor angle droop control. Compared to the existing control strategies, it has the following attractive benefits: 1) it is suitable for both grid-connected and islanded modes; 2) Seamless transition between different modes can be obtained; 3) stability condition in the grid-connected mode is independent of the transmission line impedance; 4) it is suited for any types of loads in islanded modes; 5) multi-equilibrium point problem is avoided; 6) it is suitable for four quadrant operation. The small signal stabilit…
In this paper, the short-term operation problem for a multiple energy carrier hybrid AC/DC microgrid is discussed. The hybrid microgrid consists of AC and DC parts, which are connected by means of inverters as well as natural gas network. The microgrid includes photovoltaic (PV) unit, wind turbine (WT), battery storage unit and gas-fired microturbines. A mixed integer linear programming is formed to minimize the overall cost of the microgrid including cost of natural gas supply, the value of lost load and battery degradation cost. The presented case study explored the importance of inverter ch…
This paper presents a novel grid-forming voltage control strategy for a battery energy storage system to maintain balanced three-phase output voltages when serving unbalanced loads. A stationary reference frame ($αβ$) based control scheme is proposed to regulate positive-sequence and negative-sequence voltages. Compared with the conventional rotating reference frame ($dq$) based control scheme, the proposed scheme shows better dynamic performance. Then, we analyze the system zero-sequence network and propose adding a grounding transformer to the Y/Yg connected output transformer to further red…
Microgrids are increasingly recognized as a key technology for the integration of distributed energy resources into the power network, allowing local clusters of load and distributed energy resources to operate autonomously. However, microgrid operation brings new challenges, especially in islanded operation as frequency and voltage control are no longer provided by large rotating machines. Instead, the power converters in the microgrid must coordinate to regulate the frequency and voltage and ensure stability. We consider the problem of designing controllers to achieve these objectives. Using…
The energy demand is growing daily at an accelerated pace due to the internationalization and development of civilization. Yet proper economic utilization of additional energy generated by the Islanded Hybrid Microgrid System (IHMS) that was not consumed by the load is a major global challenge. To resolve the above-stated summons, this research focuses on a multi-optimal combination of IHMS for the Penang Hill Resort located on Penang Island, Malaysia, with effective use of redundant energy. To avail this excess energy efficiently, an electrical heater along with a storage tank has been design…
