Trends in Microgrid Control

An overview, definitions, and classification of the main control issues and trends in microgrids are presented in this talk, based on the survey carried out by the Power System Dynamic Performance (PSDP) Committee Task Force in Microgrid Control. In this context, the main characteristics and challenges of secondary controls, i.e. Energy Management Systems (EMS), for microgrids are discussed, together with actual EMS architectures associated with deterministic, probabilistic, robust and interval methodologies developed at the University of Waterloo, some of which are being implemented in practice. Thus, an EMS consisting on a simplified Unit Commitment (UC) problem and a detailed dispatch Optimal Power Flow (OPF) problem, in decoupled and integrated architectures, both based on model predictive control and receding horizon techniques, are presented. Stochastic programming and a robust optimization implementations of the UC problem, to better deal with uncertainty of particularly wind and solar power sources, are also discussed, together with an interval approach based on Affine Arithmetic (AA) to model and solve uncertain OPF microgrid problems. The practical feasibility and benefits of the proposed EMS approaches are demonstrated and compared based on results obtained from tests carried out on a realistic benchmark microgrid.