Smart branch and droop controller based power quality improvement in microgrids

Abstract

Abstract This paper presents two unique smart branch controller for compensating several power quality disturbances. The first proposed intelligent branch controller comprises a series transformer with its indirectly controlled impedance by secondary voltage injection. Further, the smart controller is made adaptive and flexible. It is installed at the point of common coupling (PCC), where PCC voltage & load current can be locally acquired without the presence of a communication channel, which then tracks its references as pure sinusoidal waveforms. Therefore without any filter requirement, harmonic elimination is done by the smart branch controller. The proposed smart controller can be applied in microgrids (MGs) for multi-objective optimization of power quality (PQ). For proper elimination of harmonics and to enhance the quality of power supply, the smart branch is optimized by a droop controller, which delivers power to a constant current source and eliminates harmonics by providing an appropriate quantity of harmonic voltage to the inverter voltage. The total harmonic distortion (THD) becomes 23.06% for the voltage and 6.24% for the current with droop controller, whereas, with an only smart branch into the power network, the THD becomes 26.47% for the voltage and 12.30% for the current. The simulation result concludes that the discussed optimized smart branch-based droop controller reduces drastically THD. Also, a separate study has been performed on the improvement of PQ by second proposed smart controller called as Photovoltaic Distribution Static Compensator (PV-DSTATCOM) grid-tied system using an adaptive reweighted zero attracting (RZA) control algorithm with perturbation and by applying maximum power point tracking technique (MPPT) for a three-phase system. The converter with PV array along with an active filter feature known as PV-DSTATCOM is required to convert the DC voltage into AC and for the improvement of the PQ by limiting harmonic distortions. It is concluded from the simulation results that the use of the RZA strategy presents an excellent steady state and transient response. The proposed PV grid-tied system is capable of working round the clock for both constant and variable irradiation and linear loads. The system is termed as smart as it can perform both modes automatically sensing the PV power and is capable of multi-directional power flow. The proposed method performs dual functions of improving PQ by working as DSTATCOM and also transfers power to the load and the grid obtained from PV array.