Development of a Smart Energy Community by Coupling Neighbouring Community Microgrids for Enhanced Power Sharing Using Customised Droop Control

Sandipan Patra, Sreedhar Madichetty and Malabika Basu
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Sandipan Patra: School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Technological University Dublin, D07 EWV4 Dublin, Ireland
Sreedhar Madichetty: École Centrale School of Engineering, Mahindra University, Hyderabad 500043, India
Malabika Basu: School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Technological University Dublin, D07 EWV4 Dublin, Ireland

Energies, 2021, vol. 14, issue 17, 1-17

Abstract: This article aims to develop a smart isolated energy community (EC) by coupling the neighbouring rural community microgrids (CMGs) with enhanced droop control for efficient power sharing. This recommended solution employs a power management (PM) based droop-control to enable independent neighbouring CMGs to share power on an available basis by not constraining CMG inverters to equal power sharing. During the grid-connected mode, the droop control may have different power setpoints of each CMG. However, during the standalone mode of operation, the power setpoint should be defined according to their power rating and availability to maintain the system stability. In this article, a PM strategy is developed to maintain the power setpoints of the autonomous CMGs. An improper selection of power setpoints in autonomous CMG can raise the DC link voltage to an unmanageable value and can cause an inadvertent shutdown of CMG. The suggested PM-based droop control enables the CMG inverter not to restrict the inverter to equal power share but to distribute its active power as available in an asymmetric way, if required. The dynamic performance of the proposed coupled system incorporated with two remote isolated CMGs is investigated in a MATLAB environment. Further, a laboratory prototype of the proposed system has been developed using a LabVIEW-based sbRIO controller to verify the efficacy of the proposed approach.

Keywords: energy community; community microgrids; power sharing; droop control; power management; parallel inverter; interconnected system (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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