A Resilience Enhanced Secondary Control for AC Micro-grids

Communication-based distributed secondary control is deemed necessary to restore the state of islanding AC microgrids to set points. As its limited global information, the microgrids become vulnerable to cyber-attacks, which by falsifying the communicating singles, like the angular frequency, can disturb the power dispatch in the microgrids...

Low-Voltage dc System Building Blocks: Integrated Power Flow Control and Short Circuit Protection

Low-voltage direct current (LVdc) systems are a promising technology for systems with a high penetration of renewable sources and storage that operate with bidirectional power flow. In this article, a fundamental building block for LVdc is presented for different applications, such as charge controllers, voltage regulation in street-lighting...

Microgrid planning based on computational intelligence methods for rural communities: A case study in the José Painecura Mapuche community, Chile

Microgrids (MGs) are sustainable solutions for rural zone electrification that use local renewable resources. However, only careful planning at the start of an MG project can ensure its future optimal operation. In this paper, a novel methodology for MG planning by using the uncertainty characterization of renewable resources and demand is...

Robust Optimal Control for Demand Side Management of Multi-Carrier Microgrids

This paper focuses on the control of microgrids where both gas and electricity are provided to the final customer, i.e., multi-carrier microgrids. Hence, these microgrids include thermal and electrical loads, renewable energy sources, energy storage systems, heat pumps, and combined heat and power units. The parameters characterizing the...

Secondary Frequency Control of Microgrids: An Online Reinforcement Learning Approach

In this article, we present a reinforcement learning-based scheme for secondary frequency control of lossy inverter-based microgrids. Compared with the existing methods in the literature, we relax the common restrictions on the system, i.e., being lossless, and the transmission lines and loads to have known constant impedances. The proposed...

Sizing of an autonomous microgrid considering droop control

Autonomous microgrids are a suitable solution for off-grid electrification in terms of costs and reliability. The correct sizing of its generation and storage systems ensures efficient utilization of the available energy resources. Generally, many sizing approaches assume optimized energy management strategies that rely on central control...

Cyber-Attack Detection and Countermeasure for Distributed Electric Springs for Smart Grid Applications

With increasing installations of grid-connected power electronic converters in the distribution network, there is a new trend of using distributed control in a cyber layer to coordinate the operations of these power converters for improving power system stability. However, cyber-attacks remain a threat to such distributed control. This paper...

Hybrid Islanding Detection Method of Photovoltaic-Based Microgrid Using Reference Current Disturbance

This paper proposes a new hybrid islanding detection method for grid-connected photovoltaic system (GCPVS)-based microgrid. In the presented technique, the suspicious islanding event is initially recognized whilst the absolute deviation of the point of common coupling (PCC) voltage surpasses a threshold. After an intentional delay, a transient...

High power quality maximum power point tracking-based islanding detection method for grid-connected photovoltaic systems

Islanding is a condition when distributed generators (DGs) are disconnected electrically from the upstream network. This unwanted situation should be detected effectively to ensure the safety of the maintenance staffs and power quality (PQ) requirements. This paper presents a new high PQ maximum power point tracking (MPPT)-based methodology for...

Maximum Power Point Tracking Injection Method for Islanding Detection of Grid-Connected Photovoltaic Systems in Microgrid

This paper proposes a novel islanding detection method (IDM) for grid-connected photovoltaic systems (GCPVSs) through a disturbance injection in the maximum power point tracking (MPPT) algorithm. When an absolute deviation of the output voltage exceeds a threshold, the applied disturbance shifts system operating point from its maximum power...

The long road to universal electrification: A critical look at present pathways and challenges

Nearly 840 million people still lack access to electricity, while over a billion more have an unreliable electricity connection. In this article, the three different electrification pathways-grid extension, centralized microgrids, and standalone solar-based solutions, such as pico-solar and solar home systems (SHS)-are critically examined...

Two-Level Islanding Detection Method for Grid-Connected Photovoltaic System-Based Microgrid with Small Non-Detection Zone

This article proposes a fast and reliable two-level islanding detection method (IDM) for grid-connected photovoltaic system (GCPVS)-based microgrid. In the first level of the proposed IDM, the magnitude of the rate of change of output voltage (ROCOV) is computed. If this variable exceeds a predefined threshold, a disturbance is injected into...

Load estimation based on self-organizing maps and bayesian networks for microgrid design in rural zones

Microgrids are suitable electrical solutions for providing energy in rural zones. However, it is challenging to propose in advance a good design of the microgrid because the electrical load is difficult to estimate due to its highly dependence of the residential consumption. In this paper, a novel estimation methodology for the residential load...

Min-max control of fuel-cell-car-based smart energy systems

Recently, the idea of using fuel cell vehicles as the future way of producing electricity has emerged. A fuel cell car has all the necessary devices on board to convert the chemical energy of hydrogen into electricity. This paper considers a scenario where a parking lot for fuel cell cars acts as a virtual power plant. In order to describe the...

From DC nano- and microgrids towards the universal DC distribution system - a plea to think further into the future

The traditional ac power system is challenged by the increased amount of distributed energy resources. Enormous changes and investments are necessary in order to achieve an ac smart grid capable of coping with the challenges introduced. In dc, solutions seem to be more straightforward since most of the distributed energy sources and most of the...