Additional Controls to Enhance the Active Power Management within Islanded Microgrids

Abstract Balancing the generated and consumed power in a microgrid is highly affected by the varying output power of the intermittent, renewable energy-based, distributed energy resources. This paper focuses on coordinating the output power among the energy resources within a microgrid while managing the consumed power at the demand side. The considered microgrid in this study consists of a battery system, which is the primary unit for grid-forming, as well as a photovoltaic system as the grid-following unit. A soft starting ramp function and an active power reduction function are implemented within the photovoltaic inverter respectively for the periods after the isolation of the microgrid from the grid and the over-frequency observation. Meanwhile, a demand-side management is developed based on the level of the battery’s state of charge, to facilitate the microgrid with a longer time in supplying its critical loads.