Control devices development of multi‐microgrids based on hierarchical structure

Abstract

With the fast proliferation of microgrids integrated into the power grid, several nearby microgrids with common benefit have been coupled to be multi‐microgrids (MMGs), which is a significant stage for developing the smart grid. A suitable control structure and corresponding control device need to be proposed for the MMGs operating efficiently. However, mostly micrgrid control devices are still restricted to the single microgrid and have limited application without the common design. The authors develop control devices with a prodigious popularisation value for the MMGs based on the hierarchical control structure. According to the proposed four‐layer control architecture (scheduling layer, central control layer, integrated terminal layer and bottom layer), the hardware and software design suitable for the MMGs control devices and its multi‐time scale communication architecture has been presented. Furthermore, the appearance design and interface exploitation were introduced as well. Experimental results are provided to demonstrate the validity of the proposed MMGs control structure and devices, which could contribute to the large‐scale application of MMGs control devices and provide a reference for other MMGs projects.