A Novel Real-Time Energy Management Strategy for Gird-Friendly Microgrid: Harnessing Internal Fluctuation Internally

TL;DR

This paper introduces a two-phase real-time energy management strategy for microgrids that effectively handles internal fluctuations, making microgrids more grid-friendly by coordinating optimal dispatch and fast-acting control.

Contribution

It presents a novel two-phase approach combining model predictive control and fast battery control to manage microgrid fluctuations internally.

Findings

Effective fluctuation mitigation demonstrated in simulations

Microgrid can operate as a controllable asset for the grid

Strategy maintains stable tie-line power flow

Abstract

Typically, a large portion of microgrid generating capacity is from variable renewable resources that are greatly impacted by the environment and can be intermittent as well as stochastic. This would result in uncertainty of microgrid net-load, and negatively affect the grid reliability. A two-phase real-time energy management strategy for networked microgrid is proposed in this paper to address microgrid internal fluctuation internally, which enables a microgrid to become grid-friendly. The proposed strategy is based on coordination between the real-time dispatch (RTD) phase and the real-time control (RTC) phase. In the RTD phase, model predictive control (MPC) is used to optimally dispatch microgrid resources in the current time interval while considering near future situations. The RTC phase addresses microgrid internal net-load fluctuation with fast-acting batteries, which aims to maintain a constant tie-line power flow between the main grid and the microgrid for the current dispatch interval. Numerical simulations conducted on ten different net-load scenarios can demonstrate the performance of the proposed two-phase energy management strategy that will enable a microgrid to operate as a controllable asset with static electricity consumption or production in an economic dispatch interval from the perspective of the bulk grid operator.