Control of single-phase islanded PV/battery minigrids based on power-line signaling

Power regulation of all converter units in a micro-grid should not be only determined by load demand, but also by the available power of each unit, i.e. a converter fed by a battery. Energy management control is essential in order to handle the variety of prime movers which may include different types of renewable energy sources (RES) and energy storage systems (ESS). Specifically, the recharging process of secondary battery, the most prominent ESS, should be done in a specific manner to preserve its life-time, microgrid line voltage must be kept within the bounds and the energy offered by RES should be utilized as efficiently as possible. This paper proposes a coordinated control strategy based on power-line signaling (PLS), instead of common communications, for a single-phase minigrid in which each unit can operate in different operation modes taking into account the resource limitation. The whole system is explained ahead and finally, Hardware in the loop results obtained with a dSPACE are presented in order to validate the proposed control strategy.