Power Balancing in a DC-meshed Microgrid Through Constrained Optimization (C3μ project)

The energy from fossil fuel sources results in the huge amounts of pollution as well as the exhaustion of coal and oil. These problems lead us to find other energy sources as well as a better solution in power distribution in order to reduce the power losses. This project considered the DC part of a hybrid AC/DC microgrid with a meshed topology. It addressed the cost minimization, the battery scheduling and the power loss minimization within the power distribution network through constrained optimization. The novelty came from applying differential flatness properties to the microgrid components and formulating the cost and constraints in terms of the associated B-splines parametrization of the flat outputs (the voltages and currents of the system). This allowed obtaining optimal power profiles to minimize the power dissipation and the cost of the electricity purchase from the external grid. Based on the weather forecast and the historical power consumption data, these profiles were tracked using a model predictive control at the higher level, while the lower level deals with the operation of the switches within the DC/DC converters. Extensive simulations under nominal and fault-affected scenarios using realistic data validate the proposed approach.

This project, in the collaboration between LCIS (in Valence) and Ampere labs (in Lyon), is funded by ANR (Agence Nationale de la Recherche) within the framework of the project ANR-15-CE05-0004 C3μ (Components, Control and Communication for DC microgrid).