Power Smoothing in Condominium Microgrids ConGRID case study

This paper discusses power smoothing in a Condominium Microgrid (ConGRID). The study considers using a Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) for power smoothing and its impact on distributed load and distributed photovoltaic (PV) generation. The microgrid under study, ConGRID, is located in a condominium in Barão Geraldo, Campinas, Brazil, and consists of real consumers with PV generation installed on their houses and a BESS connected at the point of common coupling. The paper provides a methodology for simulating power smoothing at ConGRID using OpenDSS, an electric grid simulator, using Simple Moving Average (SMA). The simulations were carried out using Python programming language with the support of the Google Colab environment. Results show that using the BESS for smoothing the distributed PV generation using an aggregated profile increases the power and voltage oscillations in the point of common coupling. However, when the smoothing algorithm uses the power at the distribution transformer as the reference, the strategy benefits the power system, reducing power and voltage oscillations between ConGRID and the main grid.