The impact of power quality when high power pulsed DC and continuous AC loads are simultaneously operated on a MicroGrid testbed

Technological advancements have been made in the field of electrochemistry leading to the development of energy storage devices that are more power dense than ever before. Coupled with their already modestly high energy density, this makes them well suited for use as the prime power source of many high pulsed and continuous power AC and DC loads operated within MicroGrid architectures. The energy storage devices of interest as well as the MicroGrid concept are both technologically immature. Their independent performance characteristics as well as the manner in which they can be integrated with one another need further research in order to understand their limitations and how they will perform in an extreme environment where high pulsed and continuous power loads are sourced simultaneously. With support from the US Office of Naval Research (ONR), a novel MicroGrid test-bed at UTA is being used to characterize how the power quality of different generation sources, including various low impedance energy storage technologies, solar panels, wind turbines, fuel cells, and fossil fuel based generators, are impacted when they are interconnected and used to source these types of high power loads. A description of the experimental setup and some experimental results obtained will be presented.