1

Design Methods and Integrated Control for Microgrid

Katsuya NISHIKAWA, non-Member, Jumpei BABA, Member, IEEE, Eisuke SHIMODA, non-Member, Takuro KIKUCHI, non-Member, Yu ITOH, non-Member, Tanzo NITTA, Member, IEEE, Shigeo NUMATA, non-Member and Eisuke MASADA, Member, IEEE

AbstractThe authors have been carrying out a preliminary study on the design of microgrid. Designing microgrid includes selection and capacity determination of power supply devices according to their response characteristics, efciency and initial cost, and development of methods for integrated control to maintain power quality and efciency. Both design and control methods depend on conditions of loads, for which microgrid is installed. In this paper, design methods of microgrid, such as power demand analysis, response characteristics measurement of power sources and fuel efciency measurement of enginegenerators, and integrated control methods for power sources are proposed, along with experimental results for a prototype of microgrid.

2) characteristics measurement of response of power sources, 3) efciency measurement of engines and 4) proposal of an integrated control method.

II. E XPERIMENTAL S ETUPS

6.6kV 50Hz

Building

I. I NTRODUCTION Recent developments in technology and the deregulation of the electricity market have opened new opportunities for microgrid, which describes an aggregation of loads and microsources operating as a single system providing both power and heat. [1] Microgrid requires different technologies depending on whether or not it is connected to a conventional power grid. When it is constantly connected to the grid, excess or shortage of generated power is compensated and maintainance of both voltage and frequency can be achieved automatically by the grid. Therefore, unpredictable power sources, such as wind turbine generators, can be installed without an additional stabilization system. On the other hand, if the microgrid is not connected to the grid, or expected to be able to operate independently when necessary, generated power and consumed power should be simultaneously identical in order to achieve stable power quality. The authors are interested in independent operation of microgrid with optimal efciency and quality of power. In this microgrid, there are several types of power sources[2], [3] and the authors aim to suppress uctuations in power at the connection as a rst technical step towards independent operation. This paper will mention the following: 1) measurement of power demand and analysis of its characteristics,
K.Nishikawa, J.Baba, T.Kikuchi and Y.Itoh are with the Department of Electrical Engineering, The University of TOKYO. Address: 7-3-1, Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-8656 JAPAN. E-mail: nishikawa@asc.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp T.Nitta is with Meisei University. E.Shimoda and S.Numata are with Shimizu Corporation. E.Masada is with Railway Technical Research Institute.

LBF

PF

LBF

Lighting Load Trans. 6.6 kV / 105 V

Experimental Power Driving Load Trans. 6.6 kV / 210 V

General Power Driving Load Trans. 6.6 kV / 210 V

Load 3

Load 2

Load1 Air Conditioner Elevator (Lift) Chiller etc.

PV

GE MGT BES

Distributed Generation Systems

Fig. 1.

Prototype of Microgrid

All experiments were carried out by using a prototype of microgrid, which consists of four types of power sources a Gas Engine(GE), Micro Gas Turbine(MGT), Photo Voltaic cells(PV) and a lead acid Battery Energy Storage system(BES). An outline of the whole microgrid system is shown in Fig.1. Fig. 2 shows the photo of the GE and MGT and Fig. 3 shows that of the lead acid battery. The power feeder is divided into experimental power, general power and lighting power. The rated output power for each power source is shown in Table I.
TABLE I R ATING OF EACH DISTRIBUTED GENERATION SYSTEM Maximum Power 22 kW 27 kW 10 kW 20 kW Minimum Power 5 kW 5 kW 0 kW 2 kW

GE MGT PV BES

2008 IEEE.

frequencies, which dominates rated power of energy storage for compensation. The authors hereby propose to analyze power demand by calculating the transition probability of power demand and its time-derivative, in order to complement Fourier series expansion. B. Denition of Transition Probability The authors have dened two types of transition probability that of power and of the time-derivative of power. Power transition probability is dened as follows: probability of transition from a specic power

to power
Fig. 2. Gas Engine (left) and Micro Gas Turbine (right)

at a specic time at time .

is called the transition time. It is less practical to calculate the transition probability continuously than to calculate it discretely. For a quantity , the discreted transition probability can be described as: probability of transition from power included in

to power included in

Equation (1) shows how to calculate the power transition probability from M measured data with a sampling interval of . A function gives a value of 1 when is included in , otherwise it is 0. An example of this transition is shown in Fig.4. If the power demand is constant, its transition probability distribution will be on a straight line without deviation.

Fig. 3.

Lead Acid Battery Energy Storage System

III. M EASUREMENT AND A NALYSIS OF D EMAND A. Background For independent operation, the development of a system that is able to respond to sudden variation of power demand is required. Quantitative discussion regarding power demand variation is necessary to determine specications of system. The authors measured power demand and analyzed the data by use of the transition probability of the demand and of the time-derivative of the demand. Spectrum analysis, such as Fourier series expansion, is commonly applied for the adoption of devices, which are designed to suppress power uctuations. Although determination of the optimum ratings can be essential for fast compensation devices because of their high price per capacity, the obtained intensity of spectrum is not always helpful for determining device ratings, because spectrum analysis loses information in the time domain. Typical lost information is regarding relationship between amplitude and duration of uctuations at specic

(1)

(2)

II III IV V

y P[n+1]

Power

Time
Fig. 4. Transition Probability of Power

P[n]

The time-derivative of power demand is approximated by the difference between th and th measured demand divided by the transition time.

The power variation rate Equation (3).

is obtained by
Power [kW]

300 250 200 150 100 50 0

2:00 2:12 3:00 3:12 4:00 4:12 5:00 5:12 6:00

(3) As the sampling interval is two seconds and the measurement accuracy is 1kW, the variables are dened as follows:

Time [day:hour]
Fig. 6. Measured Power Demand

Time dP

dP[n]

Intencity [|kW|]

An example of this transition is shown in Fig. 5. If the power demand is constant, its transition probability distribution will be on the origin .

1.0102 1 1.010 1.0100 1.010-1 1.010-2 1.010-3 -4 1.010 1.010-5 1.010-6 0 50 100 150 Frequency [mHz] 200 250

Power

dP[n+1]

Time

Fig. 7.

Fourier Series Expansion of Power Demand

Fig. 5.

Transition Probability of Time-derivative of Power

C. Sampling Interval Effect on Transition Probability The original measured data have a sampling interval of two seconds and longer intervals are available for comparison by averaging several data. New sampling intervals, 4, 10 and 60 seconds are chosen and calculated. D. Power Demand Measurement Measurements were carried out in each of the four seasons with a sampling frequency of two seconds. All articial power sourcesGE, MGT and BESare turned off and PV is not controlled. Summed data of demands for all loads in spring is shown in Fig. 6 and Fourier series expansion of it is shown in Fig. 7. 1) Transition Probability of Power: Transition probabilities of power are shown in Fig. 8 for different sampling intervals. It can be said that for the sampling interval of 2 seconds (Fig. 8 (a)) the distributions are concentrated around the line . the deviation from the line is 20[kW], regardless of the value at current state.

for longer sampling intervals (Fig. 8 (b) (d)) the probability of transition from a certain value to become the same valuepoints on the line dominant. In other words, power variation becomes zero when power is averaged over a long period of time. the distributions divide into two groups: smaller or larger than 150kW. 2) Transition Probability of Time-derivative of Power: Transition probability of the time-derivative of power is shown in Fig. 9. The accumulated distribution of the probability is also shown in Fig. 10, which helps intuitive understanding. Extension of transition time makes the distribution random and the variation value zero, lacking typical Y shaped distribution for sampling intervals longer than 2 seconds. E. Summary These analyses can be great help for determining the rated capacity of the devices, which are expected to suppress the uctuations in power. Multiple intervals of sampling indicate that compensating uctuations over a short period has more signicance than over a longer period when designing system specications. IV. R ESPONSE C HARACTERISTICS M EASUREMENT OF P OWER S OURCES A. Background The MGT, GE and BES, which are installed in the prototype system, have different response capability. Since it is necessary

300 Next State [kW] 250 200 150 100

0.0025 Next State [kW/s] 0.002 0.0015 0.001 0.0005 0 100 150 200 250 300 Current State [kW]

40 20 0 -20 -40 -40 -20 0 20 40 Current State [kW/s]

0.04 0.035 0.03 0.025 0.02 0.015 0.01 0.005 0

(a) Sampling Interval: 2 seconds

300 Next State [kW] 250 200 150 100 0.0035 0.003

(a) Sampling Interval: 2 seconds

40 Next State [kW/s] 20 0 -20 -40 -40 -20 0 20 40 Current State [kW/s] 0.045 0.04 0.035 0.03 0.025 0.02 0.015 0.01 0.005 0

0.0025 0.002 0.0015 0.001 0.0005 0 100 150 200 250 300 Current State [kW]

(b) 4 seconds
300 Next State [kW] 250 200 150 100 0.0045 0.004 0.0035 0.003 0.0025 0.002 0.0015 0.001 0.0005 0 100 150 200 250 300 Current State [kW] 40 Next State [kW/s] 20 0 -20 -40 -40

(b) 4 seconds
0.045 0.04 0.035 0.03 0.025 0.02 0.015 0.01 0.005 0 -20 0 20 40 Current State [kW/s]

(c) 10 seconds
300 Next State [kW] 250 200 150 100 0.005 0.0045 0.004 0.0035 0.003 0.0025 0.002 0.0015 0.001 0.0005 0 100 150 200 250 300 Current State [kW] 40 Next State [kW/s] 20

(c) 10 seconds
0.03 0.025 0.02 0 -20 0.005 -40 -40 -20 0 20 40 Current State [kW/s] 0 0.015 0.01

(d) 60 seconds
Fig. 8. Probability Distribution of Power Transition Fig. 9.

(d) 60 seconds
Probability Distribution of

Transition

to grasp the characteristics of response of the power sources for the investigation, the authors carried out test operations using sinusoidal references[5]. B. Experimental Conditions The sinusoidal references were determined to reach maximum and minimum rated power of each power source, as shown in Fig. 11. This is because response characteristic may differ by operating points and this way of determination is

supposed to result in the worst response. C. Experimental Results Bode diagrams for power sources except the PV are shown in Fig. 12. For all power sources, sinusoidal references for active power output were given directly and the output power was ignored by their controllers. The output power was expanded to Fourier series in order to calculate dominant

5
0.98 Cumulative Probability 0.75

Relative Amplitude [dB]

0.50 0.25 0.02 -30

0 -5 -10 -15 -20 GE : Amplitude MGT : Amplitude BES : Amplitude 0.01 0.1 Frequency [Hz] 1

-20

-10 0 10 Power step [kW]

20

30

(a) Transition time: 2 seconds

0.98 Cumulative Probability 0.75 0.50 0.25 0.02 -30

-25 0.001
-20 -10 0 10 Power step [kW] 20 30

(b) 4 seconds
0.98 Cumulative Probability 0.75 0.50 0.25 0.02 -30

(a) Amplitude
0 -50 Phase [deg.] -100 -150 -200 -250 -300 GE : Phase MGT : Phase BES : Phase 0.01 0.1 Frequency [Hz] 1

-20

-10 0 10 Power step [kW]

20

30

(c) 10 seconds
0.98 Cumulative Probability 0.75 0.50 0.25 0.02 -30

-350 0.001

(b) Phase
-20 -10 0 10 Power step [kW] 20 30

Fig. 12.

Bode Diagrams of Response from Reference to Output Power

(d) 60 seconds
Fig. 10. Accumulated Probability of Power Difference Transition

Maximum Power

Power

Bias

2) Obtaining electric and thermal energy from primary energy sources engines or fuel cells 3) Storing and supplying electric energy batteries or capacitors These types of sources are utilized in combination with consideration of cost, capability, environmental load and other conditions. Primary energy sources are necessary for independent operation to obtain required electricity on demand. In order to compete with conventional power systems, the microgrid is required to consume fuel as efciently as possible. Although fuel efciency of engines generally becomes higher when operating closer to their rated power, the operation point may vary widely when they are used for power generation on demand. The authors therefore measured characteristics of fuel efciency in frequency domain. B. Experimental Conditions The system were connected to the grid during the experiment and thus all power sources were able to output any value of power.

Minimum Power 0 Time

Fig. 11.

Sinusoidal Reference for Power Sources

frequency and amplitude at the frequency. V. F UEL E FFICIENCY MEASUREMENT IN T RANSIENT C ONDITIONS OF S MALL E NGINES A. Background Categorization of power sources in microgrids by types of input/output energy is as follows: 1) Obtaining electric energy from renewable energy sources wind turbines or solar panels

Both the MGT and GE utilize City-gas 13A supplied from Tokyo GAS as their fuel. The conditions for analysis of measurement are as follows: 1) Output commands of engines were varied sinusoidally with connection to the power grid. Applied output valuesfrequency, bias and amplitude of sinusoidal references are shown in Table II and Table III. 2) Output power of engines were measured with a sampling interval of 1 second. 3) Measured output power was expanded to Fourier series in order to calculate dominant frequency and amplitude at the frequency. 4) Accumulated output power was divided by energy of consumed gas to obtain the efciency. City-gas 13A has energy of 46.05[ ] according to Tokyo GASs website[4]. Since the output command must always be positive, the sinusoidal references have a certain positive bias, with amplitude smaller than this bias.
TABLE II O UTPUT C OMMAND OF MGT Frequency [Hz] Bias [kW] Amplitude [kW] 8 2 10 4 0.001, 0.002, 0.005, 12 2, 6 14 4 0.01, 0.02, 0.05, 0.1 16 2, 6 18 4 20 2

Efficiency [%] 20 16 12 6 8 10 12 Bias [kW] 14 16 18 0 1 2 3 4 5

f=0.001[Hz] f=0.002[Hz] f=0.005[Hz] f=0.01[Hz] f=0.02[Hz] f=0.05[Hz] f=0.1[Hz]

Amplitude [kW]

Fig. 13.

Efciency of MGT to Bias and Amplitude

Efficiency [%] 24 20 16 12 6 8 10 12 Bias [kW] 14 16 18 0 1 2 3 4

f=0.001[Hz] f=0.002[Hz] f=0.004[Hz] f=0.01[Hz] f=0.02[Hz] f=0.05[Hz] f=0.1[Hz]

Amplitude [kW]

TABLE III O UTPUT C OMMAND OF GE Frequency [Hz] 0.001, 0.002, 0.004, 0.01, 0.02, 0.05, 0.1 Bias [kW] 8 10 12 14 16 Amplitude [kW] 2 4 2, 6 4 2

Fig. 14.

Efciency of GE to Bias and Amplitude

and amplitude do not appear to affect their efciency. Normalized efciency was calculated on intention to investigate the effect from the amplitude but conspicuous tendency was not found. To conclude efcient use of engines for electricity generation in normal operations, high output power in average is dominant and transient effects can safely be neglected. VI. I NTEGRATED C ONTROL M ETHOD A. Background With the results mentioned above, the authors have compared several kinds of control methods[6]. It is clear that centered control with exclusive communication lines for each power source can achieve the best performance, but requires the highest cost. On the other hand, completely distributed control without communication between each source can cause power interference. Firstly, the authors selected centered real-time control with exclusive communication lines. B. Control Strategies Fig. 17 shows the block diagram of the control system, which has been named Cascaded Control. The power sources compensate power uctuations in the load and maintain a

C. Results of Measurement Fuel efciency is plotted in Fig. 13 and 14 versus the bias value and the amplitude of the dominant frequency of output power. The dominant frequency is almost identical to the frequency of command its difference was smaller than quantization step-size of the frequency. Although the bias was also identical to the command value, the amplitude was smaller for higher frequencies. Fig. 15 and Fig. 16 show the variation rate of output power versus the normalized efciencyfuel ef ciency during sinusoidal operation divided by that of constant operation. D. Tendencies and Conclusions It may concluded from Fig. 13 and Fig. 14 that efciency is mainly affected by the bias and becomes higher when its bias is closer to rated power. On the other hand, frequency

7
1 f=0.001[Hz] f=0.002[Hz] f=0.005[Hz] f=0.01[Hz] f=0.02[Hz] f=0.05[Hz] f=0.1[Hz]

0.95 Normalized Efficiency

0.9

0.85

0.8

115 110 105 100 95 90 85 80 75 15:00 Time [hour:min]

Pload

Power [kW]

15:30

0.75 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 Amplitude / Bias 0.5 0.6

Fig. 15.

Normalized Efciency of MGT over

1

Power [kW]
f=0.001[Hz] f=0.002[Hz] f=0.004[Hz] f=0.01[Hz] f=0.02[Hz] f=0.05[Hz] f=0.1[Hz]

(a) Load Demand

70 65 60 55 50 45 40 35 30 15:00 Time [hour:min] Pgrid

0.95 Normalized Efficiency

0.9

0.85

15:30

0.8

(b) Power Flow at the Connection to the Grid

0.75 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35 Amplitude / Bias 0.4 0.45 0.5 0.55

Fig. 18.

Power Flow during Control Test

Fig. 16.

Normalized Efciency of GE over

Control PC

PMGTBias+PGEBias+PBESBias PGridREF PLoad

PMGTBias PMGTref Limiter Controller MGT PMGT PGE Controller GE

LPF1 PMGTBias PGEBias

LPF2 PBESBias PMGTBias+PGEBias LPF3

PGEref Limiter

characteristics measurement of the power sources, fuel efciency measurement of the power sources and the integrated control strategy for microgrid, along with experimental results. By using the prototype microgrid, it was conrmed that these methods of design contribute to the desired stable operation. Their future works are to improve the integrated control strategy and to realize independent operation of microgrid by using a pre-production type of microgrid.

PBES PBESref Controller BES

Limiter

R EFERENCES
[1] Robert Lasseter et al : White Paper on Integration of Distributed Energy Resources - The CERTS MicroGrid Concept, DOE Transmission Reliability Program (Apr. 2002) http://certs.lbl.gov/pdf/LBNL_50829.pdf [2] J.Baba, E.Shimoda, S.Numata, T.Kikuchi, S.Hirohashi, T.Nitta, E.Masada: Test Result of Islanding Operation of Microgrid by Using Cascaded Control Method for Multiple Types of Distributed Power Source, IEEJ2007, 6-038 (in Japanese) [3] J.Baba, S.Numata, D.Sekine, S.Kusakawa, T.Yonezu, A.Denda, T.Nitta, E.Masada: Example of Comparison between Simulation and Measurement of Integrated Control for Multiple Types of Distributed Power Source, PE-05-98/PSE-05-105, IEEJ, 2005.9 (in Japanese) [4] Tokyo GAS WEB site: http://home.tokyo-gas.co.jp/userguide/ userguide 06.html (in Japanese) [5] J. Baba, S. Numata, S. Suzuki, S. Kusagawa, T. Yonezu, A. Denda, T. Nitta, E. Masada: Fundamental Measurements of a Small Scale Micro Grid Model System, ICEE 2005, Kunming, China, 2005.7 [6] J. Baba, S. Suzuki, S. Numata, S. Kusagawa, T. Yonezu, A. Denda. T. Nitta and E. Masada:Power supplying system for micro grid by combination of different distributed power sources, EPE2005, 344, Dresden, Germany, 2005.9

Fig. 17.

Block diagram of the integrated control

constant power ow at the connection to the grid, which is the rst requirement to realize independent operation. In this test system, the MGT has the slowest response and its command is directly given by the load signal. The rest is compensated by the GE and BES, which are able to respond faster. is the reference for the constant ow at the connection and , are reference and values of power bias for each source. C. Experimental Results Fig. 18 shows the load demand and power ow at the connection to the grid during the test. A constant power ow is maintained with the proposed control method. VII. C ONCLUSIONS AND F UTURE W ORKS The authors have proposed the methods for the design transition probability analysis of power demand, response

Katsuya NISHIKAWA was born in Kyoto, Japan on June 20, 1982. He received a B.E. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Tokyo in 2004. He is now a student of the master cource of the University of Tokyo. His areas of interest are power electronics and electrical machines.