Managing intermittent renewables in a microgrid

Renewable energy sources connected to the utility grid can achieve enough penetration to affect the distribution system since they are intermittent. An aging electric distribution system infrastructure, with an increasing demand for power quality, reliability, energy surety, and security, needs solutions for managing increasing penetration of renewables. By 2015, the global wind and solar Photovoltaic production capacities are expected to reach 430.6 GW and 125.9 GW, respectively. The potentials of DGs can be better realized in the concept of a microgrid rather than as individual sources. In this paper, the standard IEEE 34 bus is used as a feeder and managed as a microgrid. The system parameters are scaled down to 12kV level and two renewable sources including 500kW solar PV and 1MW wind turbine have been added to the system. The distribution system and the renewables are modeled using PSCAD software and practical constraints of the renewables are considered. The monitoring requirements of the microgrid and control requirements for these DGs are managed to maintain the power quality of the system when loads are varied and the renewable sources are modeled with annual variation at different locations.