Supervisory control strategy for the effective solar energy utilization in a residential microgrid system using a cost-effective controller

Abstract

In developing countries, load shedding is a frequent phenomenon to meet the high load. Therefore, a backup power system (battery with inverter) is a common alternative in an average middle-class house. Nowadays, solar-based grid-connected systems are also widely used during load shedding. However, these systems have some drawbacks, e.g., the solar photovoltaic (PV) gets underutilized when the battery is fully charged and the PV power is more than load demand. Moreover, solar power gets properly utilized only under the load shedding condition. Therefore, this paper proposes a novel supervisory control scheme to ensure maximum harnessing of solar power with effective utilization of stored energy. The proposed control action is based on the battery voltage, solar irradiance, and grid supply to decide the utilization of power from the solar PV or grid. The proposed rule-based control employs these three input parameters to achieve a reliable power supply for the residential microgrid. The proposed microgrid system is realized through simulation and experimental analysis, and the performance results are found to be efficient. Furthermore, comparison is also made with recently published work on the same system to illustrate the superiority of the proposed strategy.