Distributed Energy Resources Management in a Low-Voltage Test Facility

The electric energy demand will increase in the future, and the will to exploit larger amounts of generation from renewable resources requires the development of new strategies to manage a more complex electrical system. Different techniques allow the smart management of distribution networks such as load shifting, peak shaving, and short-term optimization. This work aims to test, in a real low-voltage (LV) active network (LV test facility of Strathclyde University of Glasgow), a Microgrid Smart Energy Management System, which adopts a two-stage strategy. The two levels of the proposed energy control system are composed of: 1) midterm controller that, according to weather, load, and generation forecasts, computes the profile of the controllable resources (generation, load, and storage), the dispatch problem is then solved through an optimization process; and through 2) short-term controller, which controls the power absorption of the active network. This procedure is hierarchically designed to dispatch the resources/loads, according to priority signals with the objective to contain the energy consumption below predetermined thresholds. The scalability and effectiveness of the architecture, which is validated in a real test bed, demonstrates the feasibility of implementing such a type of controller directly connected to the LV breakers, delivering a part of a real smart grid.