Hardware-in-the-loop platform for the coordination of distributed energy resources to provide frequency regulation services

With the proliferation of distributed energy resources (DERs) in the power grid, new operational challenges have emerged. By coordinating these DERs effectively, one can provide services to mitigate these effects and provide value to the grid. One such service is frequency regulation, which is among the ancillary services provided in the open market management of the grid, and which has high value as it is important to maintain stability in the grid. This thesis presents a hardware-in-the-loop platform for testing the effectiveness of different coordination schemes for providing frequency regulation services. While coordination of these DERs is usually done in a centralized manner, in our testbed we aim to show the effectiveness of distributed control algorithms, which are used along with local controls to coordinate these DERs and achieve the frequency regulation objective. We first elaborate on frequency regulation and the provision process, then present an overview of our hardware testbed. We then proceed to present the various parts that make up this testbed on both the hardware and software level, describing in detail the distributed algorithm used and how it is developed on our software platform. Finally we present various experiments that showcase the use of our hardware testbed and the results that follow.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Electrical & Computer Engr

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2018

Author dc:creator

• Utomi, Samuel C.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Domínguez-García, Alejandro D.

• Microgrid, Distributed Energy Resources, Frequency Regulation, hardware-in-the-loop

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2018 Samuel Utomi

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/101176

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/101176