A Robust Control Approach for “Plug-and-Play” Integration of Distributed and Renewable Generation
Driven by economic, technical and environmental reasons, the interest in distributed and renewable generation (DG) is increasing without signs of slowing down.Large-scale integration of DG units, storage and electronic control devices will be of significant impact on the structure, performance and operation practices of future energy systems. Dynamic interactions between DG units, system control device and loads may exist and can lead to several low- and high-frequency instabilities; mainly due to the resulting complex nonlinear system-level dynamics and the active control nature of power converters.
One of the long-term objectives of Dr. Mohamed’s research program is to provide a unified framework to model, analyze and mitigate undesirable interaction dynamics in ADS via controller design and coordination. Current research activities are focused on the suppression of converter-fed power network instabilities due to local loads, load filters and network disturbances. Current investigations show that a converter-fed micro-grid system (a cluster of DG units serving critical loads) can be stabilized via a robust hierarchical energy-shaping controller that provides active damping control performance against the aforementioned low- and high-frequency instabilities.
The Globalink student will be involved in the design and verification phases of the project. First, he/she will interact with research team members to get the background needed to contribute to the research work. Second, he/she will participate in building detailed time-domain models of a converter-fed power network with conventional and proposed control structures. He/she will perform comparative and sensitivity studies to gauge the robustness of the proposed controller and it flexibility for “plug-and-play” integration under wide range of operating conditions. Finally, he/she will participate in the experimental validation activities by 1) developing a real-time code version of the proposed controller that is suitable for digital-signal-processor implementation, and 2) analyze evaluation results and document his/her findings.
