Design and Active Control of a Microgrid Testbed

Researchers at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) have installed a novel Microgrid testbed architecture that will be used for educational and research purposes. This paper documents the architecture of the UTA grid, the development of the national instruments based active control system, and some of the research progress made thus far. The specific commercial off the shelf components that make up the hardware in the system, which is actually broken up into three independent smaller grids, is described. A custom interconnection architecture will also be discussed that enables the three individual Microgrids to operate independently or in an actively interconnected mode of operation. The implementation of system control software will be presented in terms of the state machine used to develop the software. Finally, experimental data gathered from the dynamic performance of the Microgrid will be presented.