There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality.

Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

I and i

DC and AC Microgrids are key elements to integrate renewable and distributed energy resources as well as distributed energy storage systems. In the last years, efforts toward the standardization of these Microgrids have been made. In this sense, this paper present the hierarchical control derived from ISA-95 and electrical dispatching standards to endow smartness and flexibility to microgrids. The hierarchical control proposed consist of three levels: i) the primary control is based on the droop method, including an output impedance virtual loop; ii) the secondary control allows restoring the deviations produced by the primary control; and iii) the tertiary control manage the power flow between the microgrid and the external electrical distribution system. Results from a hierarchical-controlled microgrid are provided to show the feasibility of the proposed approach.

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Hierarchical control of droop-controlled DC and AC microgrids — a general approach towards standardization

Energy management means to optimize one of the most complex and important technical creations that we know: the energy system. While there is plenty of experience in optimizing energy generation and distribution, it is the demand side that receives increasing attention by research and industry. Demand Side Management (DSM) is a portfolio of measures to improve the energy system at the side of consumption. It ranges from improving energy efficiency by using better materials, over smart energy tariffs with incentives for certain consumption patterns, up to sophisticated real-time control of distributed energy resources. This paper gives an overview and a taxonomy for DSM, analyzes the various types of DSM, and gives an outlook on the latest demonstration projects in this domain.

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Demand Side Management: Demand Response, Intelligent Energy Systems, and Smart Loads

The enabling of ac microgrids in distribution networks allows delivering distributed power and providing grid support services during regular operation of the grid, as well as powering isolated islands in case of faults and contingencies, thus increasing the performance and reliability of the electrical system. The high penetration of distributed generators, linked to the grid through highly controllable power processors based on power electronics, together with the incorporation of electrical energy storage systems, communication technologies, and controllable loads, opens new horizons to the effective expansion of microgrid applications integrated into electrical power systems. This paper carries out an overview about microgrid structures and control techniques at different hierarchical levels. At the power converter level, a detailed analysis of the main operation modes and control structures for power converters belonging to microgrids is carried out, focusing mainly on grid-forming, grid-feeding, and grid-supporting configurations. This analysis is extended as well toward the hierarchical control scheme of microgrids, which, based on the primary, secondary, and tertiary control layer division, is devoted to minimize the operation cost, coordinating support services, meanwhile maximizing the reliability and the controllability of microgrids. Finally, the main grid services that microgrids can offer to the main network, as well as the future trends in the development of their operation and control for the next future, are presented and discussed.

Control of Power Converters in AC Microgrids

The increasing interest in integrating intermittent renewable energy sources into microgrids presents major challenges from the viewpoints of reliable operation and control. In this paper, the major issues and challenges in microgrid control are discussed, and a review of state-of-the-art control strategies and trends is presented; a general overview of the main control principles (e.g., droop control, model predictive control, multi-agent systems) is also included. The paper classifies microgrid control strategies into three levels: primary, secondary, and tertiary, where primary and secondary levels are associated with the operation of the microgrid itself, and tertiary level pertains to the coordinated operation of the microgrid and the host grid. Each control level is discussed in detail in view of the relevant existing technical literature.

Trends in Microgrid Control

Attack detection design for dc microgrid using eigenvalue assignment approach

This paper proposes an energy management system for coordinating distributed prosumers. The prosumers are residential microgrids which internally produce and consume energy for autonomous operation. However, better performance is achieved by cooperative operation with other prosumers neighbors. Experimental results validate the proposed strategy.

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Cooperative management for a cluster of residential prosumers

A large number of single-phase phase-locked loops (PLLs) require generating a 90° phase-shifted version of their single-phase input signal. Among the wide variety of options, using a quarter-cycle transfer delay is particularly popular. In recent years, several single-phase transfer delay-based PLLs (TD-PLLs) have been proposed in the literature. The major difference between different TD-PLLs lies in the way they have adapted to frequency changes. Regardless of this structural difference, a common trend in investigating TD-PLLs is obtaining a linear time-invariant (LTI) model and analyzing it. Obtaining such a model, however, is often based on neglecting the input signal amplitude variations and double-frequency oscillations in the transient behavior of TD-PLLs, which results in some inaccuracies. To deal with this problem, the linear time-periodic (LTP) modeling of TD-PLLs is presented in this letter. It is demonstrated that the LTP model does not have the limitations of the LTI one and can provide much higher accuracy, but at the cost of a higher model complexity.

LTP Modeling of Single-Phase $T/4$ Delay-Based PLLs

The predictable increasing adoption of EV by residential users imposes the necessity of Electric Vehicle charging coordination, in order to charge effectively while minimizing the impact on the grid. In this paper, a two-stage distributed coordination algorithm for electric vehicle charging management in a community microgrid is proposed. Each local EV charging controller is taken as an agent, which can manage the charging to achieve the optimization of the whole community by communicating in a sparse network. The proposed algorithm aims at optimizing real-time, which manages the charging activity based on the real-time price, while meeting the requirement of technical constraints of the distribution system.

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Distributed coordination of electric vehicle charging in a community microgrid considering real-time price

Hybrid electric ships powered by diesel generators and batteries are the main configuration for shipboard microgrids (SMGs) in the current maritime industry. Extensive studies have been conducted for the hybrid operation mode, whereas the all-electric operation mode and the switching between the aforementioned two modes in a system with multiple generators and batteries have not been tested. In this paper, a coordinated approach for a hybrid electric ship is proposed, where two operation modes have been simultaneously considered. More specifically, for achieving an efficient operation with reduced generator wear losses, the governor-less diesel-engine-driven generators have been adopted in the study. According to the practical operation conditions, two operation modes, the all-electric and hybrid modes, are preset. Based on these, the coordination of the generators acting as the main power sources and batteries regulating the power flow and improving the generator efficiency is studied. The governor-less diesel generators are regulated to inject the rated power in order to maximize the generator efficiency, while the DC bus voltage is regulated by DC/DC converters. For the benefit of the overall lifespan of battery banks, power sharing during charging and discharging states have been realized by the state of charge (SoC)-based adaptive droop regulator. For the test of two operation modes, as well as the mode switching, a simulation assessment in a 1 kV DC SMG has been conducted. The simulation results show that the DC bus voltage can be controlled well, and that the power sharing among batteries follows the design. Additionally, smooth transients can be observed during mode switching when the proposed control scheme is applied.

Juan C. Vasquez

Papers

Attack detection design for dc microgrid using eigenvalue assignment approach

Cooperative management for a cluster of residential prosumers

LTP Modeling of Single-Phase $T/4$ Delay-Based PLLs

Distributed coordination of electric vehicle charging in a community microgrid considering real-time price

Coordinated Control of Diesel Generators and Batteries in DC Hybrid Electric Shipboard Power System