SmartMicro Grid Energy System Management Based on Optimum Running Cost for Rural Communities in Rwanda

The governmental electric utility and the private sector are joining hands to meet the target of electrifying all households by 2024.However,the aforementioned goal is challenged by households that are scattered in remote areas.So far,Solar Home Systems(SHS)have mostly been applied to increase electricity access in rural areas.SHSs have continuous constraints to meet electricity demands and cannot run income-generating activities.The current research presents the feasibility study of electrifying Remera village with the smart microgrid as a case study.The renewable energy resources available in Remera are the key sources of electricity in that village.The generation capacity is estimated based on the load profile.The microgrid configurations are simulated with HOMER,and the genetic algorithm is used to analyze the optimum cost.By analyzing the impact of operation and maintenance costs,the results show that the absence of subsidies increases the levelized cost of electricity(COE)five times greater than the electricity price from the public utility.The microgrid made up of PV,diesel generator,and batteries proved to be the most viable solution and ensured continuous power supply to customers.By considering the subsidies,COE reaches 0.186$/kWh,a competitive price with electricity from public utilities in Rwanda.

TCP/IP Based Intelligent Load Management System in Micro-Grids Network Using MATLAB/Simulink

Computerized power management system with fast and optimal communication network overcomes all major dicrepencies of undue or inadequate load relief that were present in old conventional systems. This paper presents the basic perception and methodology of modern and true intelligent load management scheme in micro grids topology by employing TCP/IP protocol for fast and intelligent switching. The network understudy performs load management and power distribution intelligently in a unified network. Generated power is efficiently distributed among local loads through fast communication system of server in the form of source and clients in the form of loads through TCP/IP. The efficient use of information between server and clients enables to astutely control the load management in a power system of micro grids system. The processing time of above stated system comes out to be 10ms faster than others which ensure very less delay as compared to conventional methods. The Micro Grids system operating through TCP/IP control has been implemented in MATLAB/Simulink and results have been verified.

Comparison the Performances of Three Earthing Systems for Micro-Grid Protection during the Grid Connected Mode

This paper presents, tests and compares three earthing systems (TT, TN and IT) for Micro-Grid (MG) protection against various fault types during the connected mode. The main contribution of this work is including the models of all the micro sources which interfaced to the MG by power electronic inverters. Inverters in turns are provided with current limiters and this also included in the inverter models to exactly simulate the real situation in the MG during fault times. Results proved that the most suitable earthing system for MG protection during the connecting mode is the TN earthing system. That system leads to a suitable amount of fault current sufficient to activate over current protection relays. With using TN system, Touch voltages at the faulted bus and all other consumer’s buses are less than the safety limited value if current limiter is included with the transformer of the main grid which connects MG. For the two others earthing systems (TT and IT), fault current is small and nearly equal to the over load current which make over current protection relay can not differentiate between fault current and overload current. All models of micro sources, earthing systems, inverters, main grid and control schemes are built using Matlab?/Simulink? environment.

Study of Micro Grid Safety &Protection Strategies with Control System Infrastructures

Microgrids have been proposed in order to improve reliability and stability of electrical system and to ensure power quality of grid. Microgrid consists of low voltage distribution systems with distributed energy resources, such as wind turbine and photovoltaic power systems, together with storage devices. It is essential to protect a micro grid in both the grid-connected and the islanded mode of operation against all different types of faults. This paper describes micro grid protection and safety concept with central control and monitoring unit where multifunctional intelligent digital relay could be used. This central control & monitoring infrastructure is used for adaptive relay settings strategy for micro grid protection. Also operational safety design concept and fault mitigation technique is proposed to ensure confidence in protection system.

Design and Testing of Three Earthing Systems for Micro-Grid Protection during the Islanding Mode

This paper presents and tests three earthing systems (TT, TN and IT) for Micro-Grid (MG) protection against various fault types when the MG transferred to the islanding mode. The main contribution of this work is including the models of all micro sources which interfaced to the MG by power electronic inverters. Inverters in turns are provided with current limiters and this also included with the inverter models to exactly simulate the real situation in the MG during fault times. Results proved that the most suitable earthing system for MG protection during the islanding mode is the TN earthing system. That system leads to a suitable amount of fault current sufficient to activate over current pro-tection relays. With using TN earthing system, touch voltages at the faulted bus and all other consumer’s buses are less than the safety limited values during islanding mode. For the two others earthing systems (TT and IT), fault currents are small and nearly equal to the over load currents which make over current protection relay can not differentiate between fault currents and overload currents. All models of micro sources, earthing systems, inverters and control schemes are built using Matlab?/Simulink? environment.

Micro-source Inverters With Capacitive Equivalent Output Impedance for Improving Micro-grid Voltages

将分布式电源逆变器等效输出阻抗设计成容性可使其体现对系统无功电压调整过程相逆的电源特性,这种特性使得分布式电源逆变器更容易参与公共连接点处的电压调整。对比等效输出阻抗成感性、阻性和容性的3类逆变器下垂控制特性,对容性等效输出阻抗逆变器电压电流控制环进行数学建模;针对容性等效输出阻抗逆变器设计具备下垂调节和克服电压偏离功能的鲁棒功率外环控制器。对比仿真和实验证明,容性输出阻抗分布式电源逆变器控制器能够快速抑制系统功率变化带来的电压波动,能有效地参与系统电压调整。

Optoelectronic characterisation of an individual ZnO nanowire in contact with a micro-grid template

Optoelectronic characterisation of an individual ZnO nanowire in contact with a micro-grid template has been studied. The low-cost micro-grid template made by photolithography is used to fabricate the ohmic contact metal electrodes. The current increases linearly with the bias, indicating good ohmic contacts between the nanowire and the electrodes. The resistivity of the ZnO nanowire is calculated to be 3.8 Ω·cm. We investigate the photoresponses of an individual ZnO nanowire under different light illumination using light emitting diodes （λ= 505 nm, 460 nm, 375 nm） as excitation sources in atmosphere. When individual ZnO nanowire is exposured to different light irradiation, we find that it is extremely sensitive to UV illumination; the conductance is much larger upon UV illumination than that in the dark at room temperature. This phenomenon may be related to the surface oxygen molecule adsorbtion, which indicates their potential application to the optoelectronic switching device.

Voltage Stabilization of Hybrid Micro-Grid Using Super Capacitors

Scarcity of fossil fuel resources has motivated the researchers to develop renewable energy based power projects. Instead of using a single or independent renewable energy source, it is preferable to use the combination of such energy sources in a distributed way to compensate the power fluctuations of the system and this leads to the concept of hybrid micro-grid energy. Voltage stability is an important parameter for the secure operation of the hybrid-micro grid, and IEEE 1547 Standard defines the limit of the voltage for the successful operation of the micro-grid. Although Vanadium Redox Batteries (VRBs) can help the system to stabilize the voltage when voltage sag occurs when a heavy load is suddenly connected to the system, this stabilization process takes some time. This paper discusses the application of super capacitors to the hybrid micro-grid system, as a higher energy density element, to help the system quickly recover its transient voltage.

Design of a Monitoring System of Micro-Grid

This paper describes a micro-grid system and its monitoring system. This micro-grid system consists of generation systems, consumer electrical equipments, auxiliary equipments and the monitoring system. All the equipments have 485 communication interfaces. In order to monitor and manage this micro-grid system, we built a monitoring system, which contains modular instrument system and industrial personal computer. In order to keep real time, we adopt some measures in software and hardware. We adopt LABVIEW and its program modules in software and adopt modular instrument system in hardware. Supporting by the software and hardware, the micro-grid system can be safe and stable.

Energy Management for a Residential Microgrid Using Wavelet Transform and Fuzzy Control Including a Vehicle-to-Grid System

This paper presents the design and implementation of an energy management system （EMS） with wavelet transform and fuzzy control for a residential micro-grid. The hybrid system in this paper consists of a wind turbine generator, photovoltaic （PV） panels, an electric vehicle （EV）, and a super capacitor （SC）, which is able to connect or disconnect to the main grid. The control strategy is responsible for compensating the difference between the generated power by the wind and solar generators and the demanded power by the loads. Wavelet transform decomposes the power difference into a smoothed component and a fast fluctuated component. The command approach used for fuzzy logic rules considers the state of charging （SOC） of EV, renewable production, and the load demand as parameters. Furthermore, the command rules are developed in order to ensure a reliable grid when taking into account the EV battery protection to decide the output power of the EV. The model of the hybrid system is developed in detail under Matlab/Simulink software environment.

Harmonic Suppression Method Based on Immune Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm in Micro-Grid

Distributed generation has attracted great attention in recent years, thanks to the progress in new-generation technologies and advanced power electronics. And micro-grid can make full use of distributed generation, so it has been widespread concern. On the other hand due to the extensive use of power electronic devices and many of the loads within micro-grid are nonlinear in nature, Micro-grid generate a large number of harmonics, so harmonics pollution needs to be addressed. Usually we use passive filter to filter out harmonic, in this paper, we propose a new method to optimize the filter parameters, so passive filter can filter out harmonic better. This method utilizes immune particle swarm optimization algorithm to optimize filter parameters. It can be shown from the simulation results that the proposed method is effective for micro-grid voltage harmonics compensation.

Control System Development and Test for the Operation of a Micro-Grid System—PART I

This paper presents design, analysis and simulation performance of an active power controller for stable and reliable operation of a micro-grid system. Power balance between generation and consumer is a critical issue for stable and reliable operation of the micro-grid systems. This issue becomes more critical when a micro-grid system contains stochastic nature distributed generations such as wind and solar because their output power changes non-uniformly. In order to achieve accurate and fast power balance in such a micro-grid system, power in the system has to be regulated continuously. Such an objective can be achieved using droop based alternating current control technique. Because the droop characteristic employed into the developed controller initiates determining the power deviation in the system which is continuously regulated by controlling the current flow into dump power resistors. The designed controller is simulated for the operation of a micro-grid system in stand-alone mode under various operating conditions. The simulated results show the ability of the developed controller for stable and reliable operation of the micro-grid that contains renewable sources. The experimental development of the micro-grid system and the testing of the developed active power controller are presented in PART II of this paper.

Increasing the Efficiency of Grid Tied Micro Wind Turbines in Low Wind Speed Regimes

Major problem with grid tied micro wind turbine is synchronization and wind variability. Due to this problem the stability of available grid gets reduced. The stability can be achieved by output power control of the turbine. Major part of many countries like India, the annual mean wind speed is not high. The rated wind speed of turbine remain around 11 m/s and cut in is around 3.5 m/s. Due to this problem we aimed to develop a sustainable wind energy system that can provide stable power supply even at the locations of low wind speed of 2 - 4 m/s. To address this issue, a momentary impulse or external torque to the rotor by external motor is one of the good options to maintain the momentum of blades and thus provide stability for sufficient time. Various theoretical calculations and experiments are conducted on the above method. This would increase the output power and also the efficiency of wind turbine. We show that Return-On-Investment will be high as compared with other grid connected turbines. Our proposed concept in the present study, if implemented properly, can help the installation of number of wind turbines even at domestic level. It also makes the consumers energy independent and promotes the use of wind as a source of energy and may enter as a rooftop energy supply system similar to solar.

Study and Implementation on Batteries Charging Method of Micro-Grid Photovoltaic Systems

In the micro-grid photovoltaic systems, the random changes of solar radiation enable lead-acid batteries to experience low SOC (State of Charge) or overcharged for periods of time if directly charged with such traditional methods as decreased charging current, which will reduce lifetime of batteries. What’s more, it’s difficult to find a proper reduction coefficient in decreasing charging current. To adapt to the random changes of circumstance and avoid selecting the reduction coefficient, a new fast charging method named decreased charging current based on SOC is proposed to apply into micro-grid photovoltaic systems. It combines batteries’ SOC with the maximum charging voltage to determine the charging rate without strictly selecting reduction coefficient. By close-loop current control strategy and related scheme, the experiment proves the new method is feasible and verifies that, comparing with decreased charging current, the improved method make batteries’ SOC reach 100% in shorter time as well as the temperature of batteries raise more slowly.

Operation and Control of Microgrids Using IoT (Internet of Things)

The current microgrid power management system is undergoing a significant and drastic overhaul. The integration of existing electrical infrastructure with an information and communication network is an inherent and significant need for microgrid classification and operation in this case. Microgrid technology’s most important features: 1) Full duplex communication;2) Advanced metering infrastructure;3) Renewable and energy resource integration;4) Distribution automation and complete monitoring, as well as overall power system control. A microgrid’s communication infrastructure is made up of several hierarchical communication networks. Microgrid applications can frequently be found in numerous aspects of energy consumption. Because it provides a spontaneous communicational network, the Internet of Things plays a fundamental and crucial role in Microgrid infrastructure. This paper covers the deployment of a comprehensive energy management system for microgrid communication infrastructure based on the Internet of Things (IoT). This paper discusses microgrid operations and controls using the Internet of Things (IoT) architecture. Microgrids make use of IoT-enabled technologies, in conjunction with power grid equipment, which are enabling local networks to provide additional services on top of the essential supply of electricity to local networks that operate in parallel with or independently of the regional grid. Local balancing, internal blockage management, and request for support marketplace or grid operator activities are examples of auxiliary services provided by the microgrid that can add value to each end-user and other true stakeholders. Different technologies, architectures, and applications that use IoT as a key element with the main purpose of preserving and regulating innovative smart microgrids in accordance with modern optimization features and regulations are designed to update and improve efficiency, resiliency, and economics.

Micro-Grid Smooth Switchover Method Based on Controller State Following

Micro-grid smooth switchover between different operation modes is important for steady operation and reliable power supply of micro-grid. In order to reduce the transient fluctuation of voltage and frequency during switchover, this paper proposed a new switchover method based on controller state following. When transferring to island mode, the control method for inverter of storage device changed from PQ control to V/f control. Before switchover, the output of V/f controller is always following the output of PQ controller. So that the sudden change of output is avoided at the moment of switchover. A micro-grid model with photovoltaic and battery is built on DIgSILENT Power Factory simulation software, to simulate micro-grid switchover from grid-connected mode to island mode. Results show this method can effectively suppress the transient fluctuation of voltage and frequency, and reduce the influence of transient process on power grid. This conclusion has important practical significance on micro-grid smooth switchover from grid-con- nected mode to island mode.

Optimal Configuration for Distributed Generations in Micro-grid System Considering Diesel as the Main Control Source

This paper proposes an optimal configuration of the distributed hybrid renewable generations based on the stand-alone micro-grid system, considering the diesel as the main control source. Due to the natural sources and load of user changes randomly and the non-tinearity of the power output by renewable generations, an intelligent optimization method based on the improvement of the genetic algorithm and the control strategy are discussed. The instance analysis is compared with the optimization result of the hybrid system based on HOMER （hybrid optimization of multiple energy resources） and GA （genetic algorithm） method on Matlab software. The simulation result of the optimal configuration showed the new hybrid renewable system and would improve the power supply situation which decreased the cost of energy greatly compared with the conventional form of power supply system which was operated only by diesel. The conclusion of the comparing result between HOMER and GA method shows the advantages of the strategy for the diesel as main control sources.

Trends and Overview Regarding the Involvement of Micro-Grids in Modern Power Systems

Customer satisfaction and participation in utility supply packages is the first and foremost factor in the success of any supplying agency whether wholesale or retail dealer. The paper presents the concept of major prospects of non- autonomous micro-grids installed in a certain locality. The article shows the basic background that is required for the installment of micro grid in a particular area and discusses the primary factors or pre-requisites that are required for the existence and operation of micro-grids. It elaborate the major profitable applications and benefits that developing and developed states get by using micro-grids in an area where utility grid is already functioning .It also explains the basic improvement in the quality of supply from micro grid after its installment. It also throws light on afterwards impact on society with this system, such impacts include reliability, tariff rates, economics etc. The article discusses micro-grids as the future of modern power systems. This paper shows significance of modernization by latest topologies in power systems and its effect that will come afterwards.

Simulation and Analysis of a Compact Electronic Infrastructure for DC Micro-Grid: Necessity and Challenges

Complex circuitry of electronic infrastructure of compact micro-grids with multiple renewable energy sources feeding the loads using parallel operation of inverters acts as a deterrent in developing such systems. This paper deals with applicable techniques reducing the driving circuits in parallel power inverters used in micro-grid system (MGS), mainly focused on the distributed generation (DG) in islanded mode. The method introduced in this paper, gives a minimal and compressed circuitry that can be implemented very cost-effectively with simple components. DC micro-grids are proposed and researched for the good connection with DC output type sources such as photovoltaic (PV), fuel cell, and secondary battery. In this paper, the electronic infrastructure of micro-grid is expressed. Then discussed the reasons for its complexity and the possibility of reducing the elements of electronic circuits are investigated. The reason for this is in order to compact DC micro-grid system for electrification to places like villages. Digital Simulation in Matlab Simulink is used to show the effectiveness of this novel driver topology for parallel operating inverters (NDTPI).

Micro-Grid Planning with Aggregator’s Role in the Renewable Inclusive Prosumer Market

The paper proposes a model for a micro-grid architecture incorporating the role of aggregators and renewable sources on the prosumer side, working together to optimize configurations and operations. The final model takes the form of a mixed-integer linear programming model. This model is solved using the CPLEX solver via GAMS by having a consistent data set.