Intelligent load management in microgrids

The increased levels of distributed generator (DG) penetration and the customer demand for high levels of reliability have attributed to the formation of the Microgrid concept. The Microgrid concept contains a variety of technical challenges, including load management and anti-islanding protection discrimination strategies. This paper provides a novel scheme in which loads and DG are able to detect the conditions where the load of the island cannot be sufficiently supplied. In these instances, a load shedding algorithm systematically removes loads from the system until an island can be maintained within satisfactory operating limits utilising the local DG. The concept of an Intelligent Load Shedder (ILS) module is proposed in this paper. This module is connected in series with non-critical loads in order to detect the conditions where that non-essential load should be isolated from an island. This module must be capable of communicating with the static transfer switch (STS), which is the intelligent isolator associated with the island. The STS will also be capable of sending and receiving data with each DG’s islanding protection device. The combined algorithmic control of the STS, ILS module and DG islanding protection device forms the Intelligent Load Management algorithm. This algorithm is capable of islanding protection and load shedding irrespective of the use of communications. The algorithms within this paper are simulated using MATLAB script. The results show that, on a theoretical level, the intelligent load management scheme described in this paper can be used to detect the conditions where an insufficient load is available using local parameters. Load shedding coordination is also shown to be possible with and without the use of communications between the STS, ILS module and DG islanding protection module.