Improving Microgrid Performance by Cooperative Control of Distributed Energy Sources

This paper proposes a simple and effective approach to control the distributed energy resources (DERs) in a low-voltage microgrid, to increase energy efficiency and hosting capacity of the microgrid itself, with the only requirement of narrow-band communication among distributed loads and generators. More specifically, the control aims at taking full advantage of the power control capability allowed by distributed renewable sources and energy storage units, to optimize energy efficiency and voltage stability. The resulting distributed control architecture is scalable, ensures prompt response to power transients, and provides proper power sharing even if some DERs saturate their power capacity.