Control and Power Management of a 24-Hour DC Microgrid Improved Model

In recent decades, the microgrid concept emerged as a solution to electrify remote areas and integrate renewable energy sources to mitigate environmental pollution. Owing to the evolution of power electronic devices, the ease of control, and the improved efficiency and reliability, DC microgrids are gaining increased interest. Many kinds of research address the hierarchical control in DC microgrids to accomplish multi-objectives. On the first and second levels, the control targets fast dynamic variables to achieve its objectives. Yet, on a third control level, general management functionalities are executed. Many of these management functionalities target the system variables with a slower dynamic and so, to prove the effectiveness of the proposed hierarchical control, a 24-hour model simulation is required. The wide time-range dynamics of the existing system variables make the 24-hour modeling subject a complicated matter especially, on standard computers with conventional performances. To overcome this problem, this paper proposes a 24-hour DC microgrid model which offers the best tradeoff between model precision, complexity, and simulation speed. The multi-objectives hierarchical control is adopted: on a first and second control level, several averaging techniques are introduced and compared to a detailed reference model in terms of accuracy and calculation step size. DC microgrid's general management strategy is adopted on the third control level. Simulation tests are performed on MATLAB/Simulink software to prove the viability of the proposed 24-hour model.