Adaptive power management strategy for effective VA utilization in a standalone microgrid

Abstract

This paper proposes an adaptive power management strategy for Distributed Generation (DG) inverters in a standalone microgrid. The existing droop control technique ensures load sharing among the DG inverters. However, the intermittency in power generation of renewable energy based DG pose many challenges to the standalone operation of a microgrid. Of which, the ineffective VA utilization is addressed in this paper. With the proposed technique, as the generation goes down, the active power supplied by the DG is curtailed and the DG inverter is controlled to support the reactive power demand of the load, thereby utilizing the rating of the inverter switches effectively. The applicability of the proposed adaptive control method is analyzed using real time hardware-in-loop studies.