Design and Analysis of Flexible Multi-Microgrid Interconnection Scheme for Mitigating Power Fluctuation and Optimizing Storage Capacity

With the rapid increase of renewable energy integration, more serious power fluctuations are introduced in distribution systems. To mitigate power fluctuations caused by renewables, a microgrid with energy storage systems (ESSs) is an attractive solution. However, existing solutions are still not sufficiently cost-effective for compensating enormous power fluctuations considering the high unit cost of ESS. This paper proposes a new flexible multi-microgrid interconnection scheme to address this problem while optimizing the utilization of ESSs as well. The basic structure and functions of the proposed scheme are illustrated first. With the suitable power allocation method in place to realize fluctuation sharing among microgrids, the effectiveness of this scheme in power smoothing is analyzed mathematically. The corresponding power control strategies of multiple converters integrated into the DC common bus are designed, and the power fluctuation sharing could be achieved by all AC microgrids and DC-side ESS. In addition, a novel ESS sizing method which can deal with discrete data set is introduced. The proposed interconnection scheme is compared with a conventional independent microgrid scheme through real-world case studies. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the interconnected microgrid scheme in mitigating power fluctuation and optimizing storage capacity, while at the expense of slightly increased capacity requirement for the AC/DC converters and construction cost for DC lines. According to the economic analysis, the proposed scheme is most suitable for areas where the distances between microgrids are short.