Develop an integrated micro-grid control platform for resilient and sustainable energy management in distribution networks

Abstract

Microgrids are emerging throughout the world electrical engineering community as a feasible and more practical technical solution for renewable energy integration and small-scale harvesting. Microgrids are local area power networks that can be either connected or isolated from the grid. Microgrid controlling is a necessity in operation of microgrid due to the requirements of the grid stability, energy management as well as improving local controllability. The principle of this research is to develop microgrid controller, which follows resilient and sustainable energy management principles for a research level microgrid setup inside the UOM-LECO Smart Grid Research Lab. After a thorough literature review, a control platform with an energy management system was proposed which maximizes PV harvest and directs it to the customers. And the research contains simulated microgrid development with controls to implement its control strategies, using real-time digital simulator (RTDS) as a novel technological tool introduced to Sri Lanka. A new addition of hardware development is proposed to the lab to setup microgrid platform inside the lab environment to do further research in microgrid controlling. Simulation results were taken accordingly to claim the functioning of the control platform as well as the results are validated under the functioning of hardware platform.