COMMUNICATION-COGNIZANT CONTROL OF MICROGRIDS
Abstract
The increased integration of power electronic devices, advanced software-based controllers, and communication networks has transformed the microgrid from a simple physical system into a cyber-physical system. In this work, advanced distributed control algorithms and communication network are leveraged to provide a robust control structure for AC and DC microgrids. Introduction of distributed control and communication networks in microgrids presents its own unique challenges, which has not been considered in existing literature. A noise-resilient distributed controller is proposed for synchronization of frequency and voltage in AC microgrids. Synchronization in AC microgrids is cast as an optimization problem, and solved using Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers to provide a robust distributed controller. An attack resilient controller is also proposed for AC and DC microgrids, which utilizes trust-based evaluation of neighbors to detect and mitigate attacks on communication links, sensors, actuators, and controller (hijacking). A containment based voltage regulator and consensus based load sharing regulator is also studied, to achieve voltage regulation within a bound and proportional load sharing in a DC microgrid. Extensive model based simulation for AC microgrid and Hardware-in-the-Loop verification for DC microgrid have been carried out to study the proposed controllers.