Supervisory Control and Power Management of an AC Microgrid

Abstract

The thesis examines the design and implementation of a supervisory controller for the energy management of an AC stand-alone microgrid. The microgrid under study consists of a photovoltaic (PV), battery energy storage system (BESS) and auxiliary (micro gas turbine) units connected to a common AC bus and supplies a local load. The BESS unit has to maintain the AC bus voltage and frequency and needs to balance the difference between the intermittent PV power and that consumed by the load. However, the BESS has limited energy capacity and power rating and therefore it is important to implement a supervisory controller that can curtail the PV power to prevent the battery from being overcharged and also to operate the auxiliary unit to prevent the battery from being over discharged. A Fuzzy Logic Controller (FLC) that can be implemented inside the BESS unit is proposed. It monitors the battery power and State of Charge (SOC) and varies the bus frequency accordingly. The variation in the bus frequency serves as a communication means to the PV and auxiliary units. If the frequency is increased above the nominal value, the PV unit starts to curtail its power and if the frequency is decreased, the auxiliary unit starts to generate power. Power curtailment and supplement are proportional to the frequency variation. In order to avoid any need for communication links between the units, the DC/AC inverters of all the units adopt the well-known wireless droop technique. The droop control of the auxiliary unit is implemented in such a way that the unit is floating on the bus and thus it generates power only if the bus frequency is decreased below its nominal value. The main merits of the proposed controller are simplicity and easiness of implementation inside the BESS unit. The effectiveness of the controller in protecting the battery from over-charging/over-discharging has been verified by simulations including a real-time simulation and experimentally.

Furthermore, the thesis investigates the effect of sudden shading of a PV and concentrated PV (CPV) on the bus frequency of an AC stand-alone microgrid. It is known that the CPV power can drop drastically, compared to traditional PV, when it is exposed to shading. A simulation model of the CPV in a microgrid has been built and the results are compared to those of the traditional PV. It is found that shading of the CPV has much more stronger effect on the bus frequency.