A Wireless-Assisted Hierarchical Framework to Accommodate Mobile Energy Resources

TL;DR

This paper introduces a low-cost hierarchical wireless communication framework for remote communities to efficiently coordinate renewable energy resources, enabling flexible and plug-and-play operation of mobile energy units with improved bandwidth utilization.

Contribution

It proposes a novel wireless-assisted hierarchical control structure that reduces infrastructure costs and enhances the coordination of mobile renewable energy resources in remote areas.

Findings

Wireless scheme improves bandwidth utilization

Framework supports plug-and-play mobile IBRs

Simulation confirms flexible operation of mobile resources

Abstract

The societal decarbonisation fosters the installation of massive renewable inverter-based resources (IBRs) in replacing fossil fuel based traditional energy supply. The efficient and reliable operation of distributed IBRs requires advanced Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) , which may lead to a huge infrastructure investment and long construction time for remote communities. Therefore, to efficiently coordinate IBRs, we propose a low-cost hierarchical structure, especially for remote communities without existing strong ICT connections, that combines the advantages of centralised and distributed frameworks via advanced wireless communication technologies. More specifically, in each region covered by a single cellular network, dispatchable resources are controlled via a regional aggregated controller, and the corresponding regional information flow is enabled by a device-to-device (D2D) communication assisted wireless network. The wireless network can fully reuse the bandwidth to improve data flow efficiency, leading to a flexible information structure that can accommodate the plug-and-play operation of mobile IBRs. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed wireless communication scheme significantly improves the utilization of existing bandwidth, and the dynamically allocated wireless system ensures the flexible operation of mobile IBRs.