Renewable energy sources are key enablers to decrease greenhouse gas emissions and to cope with the anthropogenic global warming. Their intermittent behaviour and limited storage capabilities present challenges to power system operators in maintaining the high level of power quality and reliability. However, the increased availability of advanced automation and communication technologies has provided new intelligent solutions to face these challenges. Previous work has presented various new methods to operate highly interconnected power grids with corresponding components in a more effective way. As a consequence of these developments the traditional power system is transformed into a cyber-physical system, a smart grid.Previous and ongoing research activities have mainly focused on validating certain aspects of smart grids, but until now no integrated approach for analysing and evaluating complex configurations in a cyber-physical systems manner is available. This paper tackles this issue and addresses system validation approaches for smart grids. Different approaches for different stages in the design, development, and roll-out phase of smart grid solutions and components are discussed. Finally, future research directions are analysed.Keywords: smart grid; simulation; hardware-in-the-loop; research; infrastructure; education; training IntroductionEnergy efficiency and low-carbon technologies are key enablers to mitigate the increasing emission of green-house gases still resulting in a global warming trend [1]. The efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions also strongly affect the power system. Renewable sources, storage systems and flexible loads provide enhanced possibilities but power system operators and utilities have to cope with their fluctuating nature, limited storage capabilities and the typically higher complexity of the whole infrastructure with a growing amount of heterogeneous components [2]. Additionally, due to changing framework conditions, like the liberalization of the energy markets and new regulatory rules, as well as technology developments (e.g., new components), approaches for design, planning, and operation of the future electric energy system have to be restructured. Sophisticated component design methods, intelligent information and communication architectures, automation and control concepts as well as proper standards are necessary in order to manage the higher complexity of such intelligent power systems (i.e., smart grids) [3][4][5]. Besides technical challenges also economic, ecological and social issues have to be addressed in smart grid research and innovation, too.During the last decade-especially in the past framework programs of the European Commission (i.e., FP6 and FP7)-a growing number of research and technology development activities have already been carried out in this area. Their main attempt was to fulfil the challenging goals and needs of the Strategic Energy Technology Plan (SET-Plan) of the European Commission for a sustainable environment and to foster the inno...
Renewables are key enablers in the plight to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and cope with anthropogenic global warming. The intermittent nature and limited storage capabilities of renewables culminate in new challenges that power system operators have to deal with in order to regulate power quality and ensure security of supply. At the same time, the increased availability of advanced automation and communication technologies provides new opportunities for the derivation of intelligent solutions to tackle the challenges. Previous work has shown various new methods of operating highly interconnected power grids, and their corresponding components, in a more effective way. As a consequence of these developments, the traditional power system is being transformed into a cyber-physical energy system, a smart grid. Previous and ongoing research have tended to mainly focus on how specific aspects of smart grids can be validated, but until there exists no integrated approach for the analysis and evaluation of complex cyber-physical systems configurations. This paper introduces integrated research infrastructure that provides methods and tools for validating smart grid systems in a holistic, cyber-physical manner. The corresponding concepts are currently being developed further in the European project ERIGrid.
Microgrids are composed of distributed energy resources (DERs), storage devices, electric vehicles, flexible loads and so on. They may either operate connected to the main electricity grid (on-grid operation) or separated from the grid (islanded operation). The outputs of the renewable energy sources may fluctuate and thus can cause deviations in the voltage magnitudes especially at islanded mode. This may affect the stability of the microgrids. This paper proposes an optimization model to efficiently manage controllable devices in microgrids aiming to minimize the voltage deviations both in on-grid and islanded operation modes. RSE Distributed Energy Resources Test Facility (DER-TF), which is a low voltage microgrid system in Italy, is used to verify the algorithm. The test system’s data is taken through an online software system (REDIS) and a harmony search based optimization algorithm is applied to control the device parameters. The experimental results show that the harmony search based optimization approach successfully finds the control parameters, and can help the system to obtain a better voltage profile.
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