Centralised Control and Energy Management of Multiple Interconnected Standalone AC Microgrids

When microgrids operate autonomously, they must curtail the surplus of renewable energy sources (RES) while minimising reliance on gas. However, when interconnected, microgrids can collaboratively minimise RES curtailment and gas consumption due to the ability of exchanging power. This paper presents a centralised controller and energy management of multiple standalone AC microgrids interconnected to a common AC bus using back-to-back converters. Each microgrid consists of RES, a battery, a gas-powered auxiliary unit, and a load. The battery’s state of charge (SOC) is controlled and is used in the AC bus frequency to indicate whether the microgrid has a surplus or shortage of power. High-level global droop control exchanges power between the microgrids. The optimisation problem for this interconnected system is modelled cooperatively to determine the optimal dispatch solution that minimises the energy cost from the auxiliary unit. The optimal dispatch is solved in three cases using the Nelder–Mead simplex algorithm under different settings: one-variable optimisation, three-variable optimisation with the standard droop equation, and three-variable optimisation with a modified droop equation. The optimised performance results are compared with those of the non-optimised benchmark to determine the percentage of optimal performance. The simulation results show that the total energy cost from the auxiliary unit is minimised by 8.98%.