Grid congestion mitigation and battery degradation minimisation using model predictive control in PV-based microgrid

Increasing integration of photovoltaic (PV) system in electric grids cause congestion during peak power feed-in. Battery storage in PV systems increases self-consumption, for consumer’s benefit. However with conventional maximising self consumption (MSC) control for battery scheduling, the issue of grid congestion is not addressed. The batteries tend to be fully charged early in the day and peak power is still fed-in to grid. This also increases battery degradation due to increased dwell time at high state of charge (SOC) levels. To address this issue, this work uses a model predictive control (MPC) for scheduling in PV system with battery storage to achieve multiple objectives of minimising battery degradation, grid congestion, while maximising self consumption. In order to demonstrate the improvement, this work compares the performances of MPC and MSC schemes when used in battery scheduling. The improvement is quantified through performance indices like self consumption ratio, peak power reduction and battery capacity fade for one-year operation. An analysis on computation burden and maximum deterioration in MPC performance under prediction error is also carried out. It is concluded that, compared to MSC, MPC achieves similar self consumption in PV systems while also reducing grid congestion and battery degradation.