Scope and Objectives

1. To develop a software tool for planning and designing microgrids, given a regional layout, end-to-end design objectives and a library of alternative component models corresponding to generation, transmission and distribution.
2. To design low overhead, reliable electricity scheduling and operations control algorithms that allow efficient maintenance of quality of service while satisfying constraints like total available renewable power, peak power distribution limit, conventional power costs, ancillary service costs etc.
3. To implement a scalable and extensible hardware testbed for a prototype microgrid for validation and robustness evaluation of the software tool/algorithms developed under the proposed project.

Deliverables

1. A software tool for planning and designing microgrids, given a regional layout, end-to-end design objectives and a library of alternative design components. The proposed tool is intended to be an end-to-end framework which automates specification, synthesis, scheduling and full-system validation. Through an iterative refinement methodology, the framework will allow systematic (semi)-automated design space exploration to help realize reliable, resilient and cost-effective microgrid designs.
2. New robust and flexible electricity distribution scheduling and operation control schemes that attempt to optimize various objectives like QoS in electricity, overall energy utilization, operator revenues etc. while satisfying different constraints like total available renewable power, peak power distribution limit, conventional power import costs etc. The algorithmic solutions to be developed are intended to be combined offline-online approaches so that they are reasonably accurate while possessing low online overheads.
3. A scalable and extensible 10 kW hardware testbed for a prototype microgrid. This test bed will be able to emulate real-life scenarios and thereby allow us to validate and evaluate the robustness of the software tool / algorithms to be developed. Three principal categories of power sources, namely solar, battery and grid power, will be integrated using power electronics converter (AC-DC, DC-DC and DC-AC) interfaces.

Scientific Output

Three tangible outputs are expected from this project:
1. A framework / software tool for the planning and design of new micro power grids.
2. New robust low overhead electricity distribution scheduling and operation control schemes with flexibility in terms of trade-off controllability of QoS / carbon footprint / operator revenues etc.
3. A scalable and extensible hardware testbed for a prototype microgrid. This test bed will be able to emulate real-life scenarios and allow validation of the proposed software tool and actual robustness evaluation of the algorithms on a hardware testbed.

Results and outcome till date

1. We have completed the generation of various micro-grid component models using the OpenModelica framework and have been able to create various alternative working micro-grid simulators by setting different values for the model parameters.
2. A front end has been built for high level User specification of a micro-grid architecture with suitable input parsers so that the specified grid architecture is stored in a suitable intermediate XML format.
3. A code generator has been integrated. This generator takes the XML file and generates code for a microgrid model in Modelica Language. The code can be simulated in the opensource Openmodelica simulator.
4. The first version of a design space exploration framework has been developed. This framework helps the designer converge to a design point and allows reliable and demand sensitive power distributions while simultaneously minimizing Distributed Generator (DG) installation costs and operation costs.
5. Test setup with solar array simulator is integrated with the transmission line to study the harmonic analysis, integration issue and voltage ripple study has been carried out.
6. Solar boost converter with MPPT and load management system is developed with battery storage system. The simulation study has been completed.
7. PMSG based wind generator is studied for integrating the grid for frequency stabilization of the microgrid.

Societal benefit and impact anticipated

An estimated 20 percent (approx.) of India's population still lack access to electricity, and microgrids, which are defined as small-scale, self-contained power grids, may be considered a viable solution towards providing much-needed electricity in remote areas. Additionally, microgrids will help tap India's wealth in renewable energy sources (including sunshine, wind and micro-hydel). However, the state-of-the art in microgrid design starting from appropriate layout design, unit commitment, distribution and operations control mechanisms, to demand side management and pricing, may still be considered to be in its nascent stages. Although, there are a few tools that provide limited help in planning and designing microgrids, they primarily act as simulation testbeds for fixed microgrid designs and oriented towards the generation of specific performance metrics. In most cases, the user must manually select appropriate parameter values for different components with almost no assistance from the tool. To the best of our knowledge, there do not exist any tool that allows systematic (semi)-automated design space exploration to help the designer converge to a design point which is best suited for a target community and get a quantitative estimate on performance and cost. This will help realize efficient microgrid designs through a process of iterative refinement. We purview that such a tool will lead to a level shift in microgrid design methodology and speedup the development process.

Next steps

IITG: - March 2019: Design of the prototype design space exploration framework involving unit commitment, unit localization, distribution network design considering quality of service and fault-tolerance, economic dispatch and pricing strategies for a given input scenario - March 2020: New design space exploration strategies for varying objectives, Testing, report generation IITKGP: - March 2019: tool flow for input specification to simulation model generation - March 2020: Intelligent control algorithms for intelligent Micro-grid scheduling IITP: - March 2019: Development of ring main transmission system and prototyping the same - March 2020: Integrate and control of different sources

Publications and reports

1. R. K. Behera and S. K. Parida, "PMSG Based Wind Power Generation for an Isolated Irrigation System with Inbuilt Frequency Regulation Capability," in Proceedings of ICPS'17, College of Engineering Pune, India, December 21-23, 2017, pp. 21-26
2. R. Kumar and R. K. Behera, "Controller Gain Impact on Islanded DC Microgrid Stability with Constant Power Load" (Accepted in PEDES 2018)
3. J. Kumar and R. K. Behera, "Hysteresis Current Controllers for Grid Connected Inverter: Review and Experimental Implementation" (Accepted in PEDES 2018)
4. R. Kumar and R. K. Behera, "A New Switched Capacitor DC-DC converter: Analysis, Design and Implementation "(Accepted in PEDES 2018)
5. Nilotpal Chakraborty, Arijit Mondal and Samrat Mondal, "Intelligent Scheduling of Thermostatic Devices for Efficient Energy Management in Smart Grid," in IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, vol. 13, no. 6, pp. 2899-2910, Dec. 2017.
6. Basina Deepak Raj, Satish Kumar, Sambit Padhi, Arnab Sarkar, Arijit Mondal, Krithi Ramamritham, "Brownout Based Blackout Avoidance Strategies in Smart Grids," In Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Future Energy Systems (e-Energy '18). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 456-458, 2018.
7. Nilotpal Chakraborty, Arijit Mondal and Samrat Mondal, "Towards optimal scheduling of thermal comfortability and smoothening of load profile in energy efficient buildings", (Accepted in EMSOFT 2018)
8. There are a few papers under review and several others are under preparation.

Patents

Under process solar based smart home system.

Scholars and Project Staff

IITG a. Mr. Basina Deepakraj (Research Scholar; Since May 2017) b. Mr. Bhaskar Kalita (Assistant Project Engineer; Since May 2017) c. Mr. Sudipta Khanra (Assistant Project Engineer; Since June 2017) d. Mr. Sanket Agarwal and Mr. Anirudh Sharma (B.Tech Project, Since August 2018) IITP a. Mr. Surya Prakash and Mr. Brajesh Kumar (Research Scholars) b. Mr. Rustam Kumar and Mr. Bibhunandan Pradhan (Project Associates) c. Mr. Prasant Kumar, Ms. Swati Sneha, Ms. Anamika Sinha, Mr. Arresh Balaji Velmurugan, Mr. Vinit Kumar, Mr. Omsmaran Mohapatra, Mr. Nandagopal, Mr. Vikas Bharati (Interns) IITKGP a. Ms. Rumia Masburah and Mr. Arnab Mondal (M.S. Thesis) b. Mr. Jay Mathur (M.Tech Thesis)

Challenges faced

Acquiring real field data corresponding to Generation and load distribution, from actual power grids. Involvement of appropriate representatives from the Ministry of Power would be very helpful in this regard.

Other information