A Discrete-Event Supervisory Control for the AC Microgrid

Based on Supervisory Control Theory, this paper introduces a systematic and bottom-up approach to the development and synthesis of a microgrid supervisory control (SC) to formalize a discrete power management strategy. The proposed approach is general, transparent, and rigorous. The envisioned strategy is applied to the islanded mode of operation of an AC microgrid, which includes a battery energy storage system, a solar photovoltaic unit, and a conventional rotating generator as distributed energy resources. The SC is nonblocking and maximally permissive, i.e., it enables transitions among all possible discrete operational scenarios of the microgrid and identifies those that must be avoided. The proposed supervisory control is implemented in an industrial-grade PLCnext hardware platform; the supervisory control performance is evaluated through case studies conducted in a RTDS-based real-time hardware-in-the-loop environment.