Introduction to Microgrid

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 Back Ground
▪ What is Electrical Grid
➢An electric grid is a network of synchronized power providers and consumers
that are connected by transmission and distribution lines and operated by one
or more control centers.

33 kV

11 kV /6kV

EHVAC: 800/765kV, 400kV, 220kV & 132kV 400 V

HVDC : 500kV

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• Electrical Grid Components • Vertical structure
• Thermal, Hydro, Nuclear,
Generation Generation
RES

Transmission
• HVAC
Transmission
• HVDC
Distribution

• AC
Distribution
• DC Consumers

• Industrial
Consumers • Commercial
• Domestic
Traditional grid
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 History of Power Grid
Thomas Edison – the father of Direct Current (DC) Distribution

Nicola Tesla – the father of Alternating Current (AC) Distribution

Tesla’s inventions for long distance AC distribution were commercialized in competition against Thomas
Edison’s short distance DC distribution system.

Eventually AC won the day due to its lower cost and higher efficiency in distributing electricity over long
distances.

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Sir Adam Beck – the father of Ontario’s electrical power system.

Beck believed in “publically owned power at cost to the people”.

Beck built the power system with government debt which was paid back in user fees over the lifetime of the
assets

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 Evolution of Indian National Grid
Early Sixties

Grid management on regional basis started.

• State grids were inter-connected to form regional grid
• India was demarcated into 5 regions namely Northern, Eastern, Western, North Eastern and
Southern region.

October 1991

• North Eastern and Eastern grids were connected.

March 2003

• WR and ER-NER were interconnected .

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August 2006

• North and East grids were interconnected thereby 4 regional grids Northern, Eastern,
Western and North Eastern grids are synchronously connected forming central grid
operating at one frequency.

31st December 2013

• Southern Region was connected to Central Grid in Synchronous mode with the
commissioning of 765kV Raichur-Solapur Transmission line thereby achieving 'ONE
NATION'-'ONE GRID'-'ONE FREQUENCY'.

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Regulatory authorities in Indian Power Sector

Deals with planning, policy formulation, processing and

Ministry of Power implementation of projects, enactment of legislation in regards to
power generation, transmission and distribution.

PGCIL
Responsible for national and regional power transmission planning

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 Advises on matters related to National Electricity policy and
CEA formulation of short term and perspective plans for development of
power system.

CERC & SERC Regulates tariff, formulates policies regarding subsidies and
promotion of efficient and environmental policies at central and
state level respectively.

CTU & STU

Development of efficient, coordinated and economical system of
interstate and intrastate transmission lines.

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 Impact of Electrical Grid

Global demand for energy is expected to climb about 25 percent by 2040

India contributes for about 45 percent of world energy demand growth to 2040.

India and China has shown the highest demand growth with each reaching more than 1 billion middle-class
citizens

India will grow strongly with its share of global GDP doubling

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 Cumulative Achievements(till-
Sector
31.12.2024)

Wind Power 48163.16

Solar Power 97864.72

Small Hydro Power 5100.55

Biomass (Bagasse) Cogeneration 9806.42

Biomass(Non-bagasse) Cogeneration 921.79

Waste to Power 249.74

Waste to Energy (Off-grid) 370.20

Total 162476.58

* Source: Ministry of New and Renewable Energy

 Factors affecting the performance of existing grid

Increasing demand of electricity.

Supply shortfalls of electricity.

Need of reducing losses.

Peak demand management.

Integration of renewable energy generation systems.

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Solution to global warming.

Effective use of electric vehicles.

Better customer satisfaction.

Overcoming difficulties in meter reading.

Poor efficiencies of conventional power generation systems.

Potential of technological advancements and new business opportunities.

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 Factors affecting the performance of existing grid

Ageing assets and lack of circuit capacity

• Power network designed life in need of replacement.

• The capital costs of like-for-like replacement will be very high.

Security of supply

• Need of reliable electricity supply as more and more critical loads are connected.

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Thermal constraints

• Transmission and Distribution lines at its limits.

• Reduction in the life of the equipment .
• Increasing incidence of faults.

Operational constraints

• Voltage and frequency limits.

• Uncertainty of RES.

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What is Microgrid?

A small network of electricity users with a local source of

supply that is usually attached to a centralized national
grid but is able to function independently.
 What makes the Grid ‘Smart’
The digital technology that allows for two-way communication between the utility
and its customers, and the sensing along the transmission lines is what makes the
grid smart.

Customer prospective

• If you already manage activities such as personal banking from your home computer, imagine managing your
electricity in a similar way. For examples
• Customer will no longer have to wait for monthly statement to know how much electricity he use. With a smarter
grid, he can have a clear and timely picture of it. "Smart meters,“
• Can able to see how much electricity you use, when you use it, and its cost. Combined with real-time pricing, this
will allow you to save money by using less power when electricity is most expensive.
• Smart Grid has the potential to help you save money by helping you to manage your electricity use and choose
the best times to purchase electricity. And you can save even more by generating your own power.
Source: [Link] , Department Of Energy(DOE)

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 Smart grid conceptual model (NIST)

Source: National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

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 Standard Smart Grid Definitions
European Technology Platform for Smart Grids (2006) :

“A Smart Grid is an electricity network that can intelligently

integrate the actions of all users connected to it – generators,
consumers and those that do both– in order to efficiently deliver
sustainable, economic and secure electricity supplies. A Smart Grid
employs innovative products and services together with intelligent
monitoring, control, communication, and self healing technologies
to:

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 • Better facilitate the connection and operation of generators of all
sizes and technologies
• Allow consumers to play a part in optimizing the operation of the
system
• Provide consumers with greater information and options for choice of
supply
• Significantly reduce the environmental impact of the whole electricity
supply system
• Maintain or even improve the existing high levels of system reliability,
quality and security of supply
• Maintain and improve the existing services efficiently
• Foster market integration towards a European integrated market
Source: [Link]

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 Smart Grid Definitions
U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)[1]

“Grid 2030 envisions a fully automated power delivery network that monitors and
controls every customer and node, ensuring two-way flow of information and
electricity between the power plant and the appliance, and all points in between”

International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) [2]:

“The Smart Grid is a developing network of transmission lines, equipment, controls

and new technologies working together to respond immediately to our 21st
Century demand for electricity”
Source: [1] GRID 2030; A National Vision for Electricity’s Second 100 Years, United States Department of Energy, Office of Electric Transmission and Distribution, 2003.
[2] International Electrotechnical Commission

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 Duties of smart grid

More efficient transmission of electricity

Quicker restoration of electricity after power disturbances

Reduced operations and management costs for utilities, and ultimately lower power costs for
consumers

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Reduced peak demand, which will also help lower electricity rates

Increased integration of large-scale renewable energy systems

Better integration of customer-owner power generation systems, including renewable energy systems

Improved security

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Existing Grid Smart Grid

Electromechanical Digital

One-way communication Two-Way Communication

Centralized generation Distributed Generation

Limited Sensors Sensors throughout

Manual Monitoring Self Monitoring

Failures and Blackouts Adaptive and Islanding

Limited control Pervasive control

Manual restoration Self Healing

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Smart Grid Architecture

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 Smart Grid Components

Major components of smart grid are classified as follows

• Smart Infrastructure
• Smart Communication
• Smart Management
• Smart Protection
The smart infrastructure system is further divided into two parts
• Smart energy system
• Smart information system

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Smart energy system
• Power Generation
• Transmission
• Distribution

Smart information system

• Smart metering
• Sensors
• Phasor measurement units(PMU)
• Information management

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 Power Generation
Present electricity is generated at a few central power plants by
electromechanical generators, primarily driven by the force of flowing
water or heat engines fueled by chemical combustion or nuclear power

Smarter power generation becomes possible as the two way flows of

electricity and information are supported

Distributed generation (DG) plays key role in Smart Grid

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 Distributed Generation (DG)
Energy based
Primary Output
technology Advantages Disadvantages
energy type
type
▪ Low cost ▪ Environmentally
Reciprocating Diesel unfriendly emissions
AC ▪ High efficiency, Ability to
engines or gas
use various inputs
▪ High efficiencies using ▪ Too big for small
Diesel or CHP consumers
Gas turbine AC
gas ▪ Environmentally friendly
▪ Cost effective

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Energy based
Primary Output
technology Advantages Disadvantages
energy type
type
▪ Small size and light ▪ Expensive technology
weight ▪ Cost-effectiveness -
Bio-gas, ▪ Easy start-up and shut- sensitive to the price of
Micro-turbine AC
propane down fuel
▪ Low maintenance costs ▪ Environmentally
unfriendly
▪ One of most ▪ Extracting hydrogen is
environmental friendly expensive
Ethenol, generator ▪ Expensive
Fuel cell DC
H2, N2 ▪ Extremely quiet infrastructure for
▪ Useful for CHP and hydrogen
electricity applications

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Energy based
Primary Output
technology Advantages Disadvantages
energy type
type
▪ Day and night power ▪ Still expensive
generation ▪ Storage mechanisms
Wind Wind AC ▪ One of the most developed required
renewable energy
technology
▪ Extremely environmentally ▪ Environmental impact
friendly ▪ Non-availability of
Geothermal Hot water AC ▪ Low running costs geothermal spots in the land of
interest

▪ Emission free ▪ High up-front cost

▪ Useful in a variety of ▪ Storage mechanisms
Photovoltaic
Sun DC applications required
systems

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 Energy based Primary Output
Advantages Disadvantages
technology type energy type

▪ Minimal environmental ▪ Still expensive

impact ▪ A net loss of energy in
▪ Available throughout the small scale
Biomass
Biomass AC world
gasification ▪ Alcohols and other fuels
produced by biomass are
efficient.
▪ Simple, low maintenance ▪ Unknown operations and
Solar thermal Sun and ▪ Operating costs nearly zero maintenance costs
AC ▪ Mature technology ▪ Low energy density
water
▪ Limited scalability

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Energy based
Primary Output
technology Advantages Disadvantages
energy type
type
▪ Economic and ▪ Required Suitable site
environmentally friendly characteristics
▪ Relatively low up-front ▪ Difficult energy
Small hydro
Water AC investment costs and expansion
power
maintenance
▪ Useful for providing peak
power and spinning
▪ High power density ▪ Unknown operations
▪ More predictable than solar and maintenance
Ocean
Ocean energy AC and wind costs
wave
▪ Lack of commercial
projects

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 Transmission
Increasing load demands, quickly aging components, power carrying limitations
and cost of installing new transmission lines given a new birth to advancement of
transmission system

Innovative technologies such as new materials, advanced power electronics, and

communication technologies drive the development of smart transmission grids.

Smart transmission grid can be regarded as an integrated system that functionally

consists of three interactive components:

smart control centers smart power transmission networks smart substations.

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 Distribution
Deployment of gird connected distributed generators (DG) at distribution level
increased significantly

Increase in deployment, makes the power flow control much more complicated, in
turn, necessitating the investigation of smarter power distribution and delivery
mechanisms.

Distributed generation promotes the development of a new grid paradigm, called

microgrid, which is seen as one of the cornerstones of the future SG.

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 Smart information
The evolution of SG relies on not only the advancement of power equipment
technology, but also the improvement of sophisticated computer monitoring,
analysis, optimization, and control from exclusively central utility locations to the
distribution and transmission grids.

Many of the concerns of distributed automation should be addressed from an

information technology perspective, such as interoperability of data exchanges
and integration with existing and future devices, systems, and applications.

Smart information subsystem is used to support information generation,

modeling, integration, analysis, and optimization in the context of the SG.

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Smart information system example

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 Smart Metering
Smart meter is usually an electrical meter that records consumption in intervals of
an hour or less and sends that information at least daily back to the utility for
monitoring and billing purposes.

Automatic meter reading (AMR) is the technology of automatically collecting

diagnostic, consumption, and status data from energy metering devices and
transferring that data to a central database for billing, troubleshooting, and
analyzing.

Automatic meter infrastructure(AMI) differs from traditional AMR in that it

enables two-way communications with the meter. Therefore nearly all of this
information is available in real time.

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 Sensors
Sensor networks used as a monitoring and measurement unit for grid

Need of sensors in the Smart Grid

• Quality-of-Service (QoS) requirements

• Resource constraints
• Remote maintenance and configuration
• High security requirements
• Harsh environmental conditions

Phasor Measurement Units(PMU)

• PMU measures the electrical waves on an electrical grid to determine the health of the system

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 Functions of PMUs
Providing loss-of-mains protection

Monitoring fault event

Locating disturbance

Estimating grid state

Studying synchronous islanded operation

Monitoring power quality

Devising experimental applications for the monitoring of active distribution grids.

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 Information Management
Large amount of data and information will be generated from metering, sensing, monitoring.

Smart grid needs advanced information management techniques which handles data modeling, information
analysis, integration, and optimization.

Information analysis is needed to support the processing, interpretation, and correlation of the flood of new
grid observations.

Information integration aims at the merging of information from disparate sources with differing conceptual,
contextual, and typographical representations.

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 Smart Communication

Deals with connectivity and information transmission among systems, devices, and applications

Reliable and effective information exchange is a key to the success of the future SG

Basic functional requirements

• Quality of service (QoS) of data: Critical data (e.g. the grid status information) must be delivered
promptly.
• High reliablility: Guaranteeing the reliability of such a large and heterogeneous network is not a trivial
task.
• High availability and coverage: This is mandated by the principle that the SG can respond to any event in
the grid in time.
• It must guarantee security and privacy.

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 Smart Communication
Wireless communication
• Wireless
• Mesh Network • IEEE 802.15
• Cellular Communications • Satellite Communications
• Cognitive Radio • Microwave or Free space
• Optical Communications

Wired communication
• Fiber Optic Communications
• Powerline communications

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 Wireless communication
Offers significant benefits over wired technologies, such as low installation cost, rapid
deployment, mobility, etc., but are also more suitable for remote end applications.

Wireless communication has already been widely used in our daily life and can be deployed
anywhere and anytime.

Wireless Mesh Network:

It is a communication network made up of radio nodes organized in a mesh topology, which has
emerged as a key technology for next-generation wireless networking.

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 Cellular Communication Systems:
• It is a radio network distributed over land areas called cells,
each served by at least one fixed-location transceiver
known as a cell site or base station.
• proven mature technology for data transmission for several
decades
• Examples: GSM and 3G/4G

Cognitive Radio
• Ghassemi et al[1] proposed an application of cognitive
radio for the SG based on the IEEE 802.22 standard.
• It is used as secondary radios to handle high volumes of
non-critical data and also act as backup radios in
emergency situations.

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 Fiber-optic Wired Communication
Communications:

• It has been used by large power companies to connect their generation network with their network control
facilities.
• Furthermore, its electromagnetic and radio interference immunity make fiber-optic communication ideal
for high voltage operating environment.
• It has high bandwidth capacity and immunity characteristics.
• Although it is well-known that the installment cost of optical fibers may be expensive, fiber optic network is
still a cost-effective communication infrastructure for high speed communication network backbones in
future SG.

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 Wired Communication

• Powerline communications (PLC) is a technology for carrying data on a conductor also used for electric power transmission.
Power Line
Communications:

• In the last decades, utility companies around the world have been using PLC for remote metering and load control applications.

• Technically, in PLC power electronics are used to manipulate high-voltage waveforms for signal and information oriented applications

• Narrowband PLC is well suited for smart metering infrastructure.

• PLC enables the communications between electric vehicles and power grid via powerline without introducing other wired or wireless
equipment's.

• Broadband PLC can provide the service of transferring data seamlessly from SG controllers to home networks and vice versa.

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Smart Communication in SG

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 Smart Management
Energy efficiency improvement

Operation cost reduction

Demand and supply balance

Emission control

Utility maximization

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 Smart Protection
System Reliability

Failure Protection Mechanism

• Failure Prediction and Prevention
• Failure Identification, Diagnosis, and Recovery
• Microgrid Protection

Security and Privacy

Information Metering and Measurement

• Privacy in Smart Metering
• Security in Monitoring and Measurement
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 Smart Protection System

•Ability of a component or system to perform required functions under

stated conditions for a stated period of time
•Local power generation can reduce the likelihood of cascading failure
System reliability
•An Ideal mix of the Smart Grid resources like renewables, demand
response and storages lead to flatter net demand and eventually
increases system reliability.

Failure Protection Mechanism •Predicting the weak points or the region of stability existence in its energy
(Prediction and Prevention) subsystem.

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 Failure Protection Mechanism •Some Researchers proposed to utilize PMU data to compute the region of stability
existence and operational margins.
(Prediction and Prevention) •Major blackouts can be prevented by proper predictions.

•locating and identifying the failure to avoid cascading events.

•Due to the wide deployment of PMUs, the phasor information used for line
Failure Protection Mechanism outage detection and network parameter error identification.
(Failure Identification, Diagnosis and Recovery) •Self healing can be effective if power grid is divided small sections.
•During post fault, decision-making ability should be distributed to the substation
and/or field devices for immediate action.

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 Smart Protection System
Microgrid Protection of Microgrid especially when it is islanded is quite challenging
Protection

The first and foremost challenge is to detect the islanding of the

microgrid.

The second important challenge is how to provide segments of the

microgrid with sufficient coordinated fault protection while operating as
an island separated from the utility.

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Security and Policy- Cyber security is regarded as one of the biggest challenges in Smart Grid.
issues

Vulnerabilities may allow an attacker to penetrate a system, obtain user privacy,

gain access to control software, and alter load conditions to destabilize the grid
in unpredictable ways

Smart meters are extremely attractive targets for malicious hackers, since
vulnerabilities can easily be monetized.

Wide deployment of monitoring and measurement devices (e.g. sensors and

PMUs) could also lead to system vulnerabilities.

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 Challenges in Smart Protection System

Conflict between privacy Impact of increased system

Interoperability between
preservation and information complexity and expanded
cryptographic systems:
accessibility: communication paths:

Impact of increasing energy

Complicated decision making
consumption and asset
process:
utilization:

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 Smart Grid Standards
IEEE 1547 Interconnection Standards
IEEE Std 1547 -2003
• Interconnecting Distributed Resources with Electric Power Systems.

IEEE Std 1547.1 -2005

• Equipment Interconnecting Distributed Resources with Electric Power Systems.

IEEE Std 1547.3 -2007

• Monitoring, Information Exchange, and Control of Distributed Resources Interconnected with Electric Power Systems.

IEEE Std 1547.2 -2008

• Application Guide for IEEE Std 1547 , IEEE Standard for Interconnecting Distributed Resources with Electric Power Systems.

IEEE Std 1547.4 -2011

• Design, Operation, and Integration of Distributed Resource Island Systems with Electric Power Systems.

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IEEE P2030 Interoperability Standards
IEEE P2030

• Guide for Smart Grid Interoperability of Energy Technology and Information Technology.
• Operation with the Electric Power System (EPS), and End-Use Application and Loads.

IEEE P2030.1

• Guide for the Electric-Sourced Transportation Infrastructure.

IEEE P2030.2

• Guide for the Interoperability of Energy Storage Integrated with Electric Power Infrastructure.

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 Barriers to smart grid Technologies
Huge amount of investment and lack of financial resources

Market uncertainty

Lack of regulatory framework

Low public awareness and engagement

Lack of innovativeness in the industry

Lack of infrastructure

Technology immaturity

Integration of the grid with large scale renewable generation

Need of advanced bi-directional communication systems, Cyber security and data privacy

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Thank You

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