Real-time control of microgrids with explicit power setpoints: unintentional islanding

Abstract

The invention provides a method for coping with an unintentional islanding of an electrical distribution grid within a Commelec-type framework for the real-time control of micro-grids, of Resource Agents (RA) controlled by Grid Agents (GA), comprising at least maintain at any time before the unintentional islanding occurs a rating of all resource agents controlled by a same grid agent in view of their ability to be a slack resource, by computing the rating based on a power availability and on a state-of-energy of each resource, the state-of-energy quantifying an amount of energy that may be withdrawn from a potential slack irrespectively of a PQ profile, whereby the PQ profile describes bounds for active and reactive power that a resource can inject or absorb; and a shedding list of all the resources that have to be shed if a current best candidate slack resource is selected, the current best candidate slack resource being the slack resource having the best rating of all resources as determined in the step of rating all resource agents, the shedding list being obtained by computing from an uncertainty of the resources and a predetermined order of shedding priority. The method further comprises continuously monitor islanding conditions via an available real-time state estimation process, and when an islanding condition is detected, causing the grid agent to shed all resources in the shedding list and choose an initial slack based on the rating obtained before the islanding occurrence from the step of rating of all resource agents.