Rule-Based Power Management and Quality Enhancement in a Standalone Microgrid

This article focusses on the challenges associated with solar PV-diesel generator (DG)-battery storage (BS) based microgrid operating in a standalone mode. The multi-objective and coordinate control of converters is designed and implemented to acheive power management, while maintaining operation of DG in fuel economy zone (FEZ), and increase loadability of the DG with nonlinear load. Additionally, the total harmonic distortion of DG current is maintained within 5% as per IEEE 519 standard. Moreover, the control prevents flow of negative sequence currents in the DG during single phase/double phase unbalanced faults. The state of charge (SOC) of BS is also regulated to prevent over-charging/over-discharging by regulating MPPT/off-MPPT operation of the solar PV array. The hardware implementation of control is done on the laboratory set-up to test the efficacy of the control, which concludes satisfactory performance under various scenarios, and enhanced performance as compared to contemporary algorithms.