IEEE - Examining The New Challenges In Coordinated Control And Communications For Microgrid Technologies

Worldwide electrical grids are expected to become smarter in the near future. In this sense, there is an increasing interest in intelligent and flexible Microgrids able to operate in island or connected to the grid, which will be a key point to cope with new functionalities, as well as integration of renewable energy resources. A Microgrid can be defined as a part of the grid with elements of prime energy movers, power electronics converters, distributed energy storage systems and local loads, that can operate autonomously but also interacting with main grid. The functionalities expected for these small grids are: black start operation, frequency and voltage stability, active and reactive power flow control, active power filter capabilities, and storage energy management. This way, the energy can be generated and stored near the consumption points, increasing the reliability and reducing the losses produced by the large power lines.

The presentation will give some examples of Microgrid in the world. Then the control concepts like frequency and voltage droop regulation, as well as the virtual impedance concept will be explained. Moreover the principle of the hierarchical control of AC and DC Microgrids will be presented; Secondary control for regulation of frequency and voltage amplitude of the Microgrid and tertiary control which comprises synchronization and grid interactivity between the grid and the Microgrid. The presentation describes also some examples of using communications with Microgrids in order to implement different functionalities. Distributed algorithms of synchronization between the MicroGrid and the main grid, as well as distributed islanding detection are presented.



Tomislav Dragicevic (S’09) received the M.E.E. and the Ph.D. degree from the Faculty of Electrical
Engineering, Zagreb, Croatia, in 2009 and 2013, respectively. Since 2010, he has been actively cooperating in an industrial project related with design of electrical power supply for remote telecommunication stations. He is currently a full-time Post-Doc at Aalborg University in Denmark. His fields of interest include modeling, control and energy management of distributed power systems based on renewable sources and energy storage technologies.