Candidate
Daniel Olivares
Title
An Energy Management System for Isolated Microgrids
Supervisors
Canizares, Claudio A. and Kazerani, Mehrdad
Abstract
The deployment of Renewable Energy (RE)-based generation has experienced a sustained global growth in the recent decades, driven by many countries' interest in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and dependence on fossil fuel for electricity generation. This trend is also observed in remote off-grid systems (isolated microgrids), where local communities, in an attempt to reduce fossil fuel dependency and associated economic and environmental costs, and to increase availability of electricity, are favouring the installation of RE-based generation. This practice has posed several challenges to the operation of such systems, due to the intermittent and hard-to-predict nature of RE sources. In particular, the work presented in this seminar addresses the problem of reliable and economic dispatch of isolated microgrids, also known as the energy management problem, considering the uncertain nature of those RE sources, as well as loads.
The mathematical formulation of the microgrid's energy management problem is presented, and its implementation in a centralized Energy Management System (EMS) for isolated microgrids is discussed. Using the model predictive control technique, the optimal operation of the microgrid is determined using an extended horizon of evaluation and recourse, which allows a proper dispatch of the energy storage units. The energy management problem is decomposed into Unit Commitment (UC) and Optimal Power Flow (OPF) problems in order to avoid a mixed-integer non-linear formulation. The microgrid is modelled as a three-phase unbalanced system with presence of both dispatchable and non-dispatchable distributed generation.
The proposed EMS design is tested in a large, realistic, medium-voltage isolated microgrid test system. The results demonstrate the important connection between the microgrid's imbalance, reactive power requirements and optimal dispatch, justifying the need for detailed three-phase models for EMS applications in isolated microgrids.