A review on various Smart Grid Technologies used in Power System

Electrical infrastructure is expanding day by day due to which smart grid gives better vision for electrical reliability. Various parameters like quality and quantity of power transmitted should be available with the electricity board which can be achieved using smart sensing, metering and communication technologies. If all the above requirements are met in power system then it is called smart grid (SG). SG also helps consumers to manage the load patters and also to manage their expenses. The main component of SG is the communication technology to share data between consumers and grid since grid operators requires real time data to schedule their supply. The Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) uses Aggregation Protocol with Error Detection (APED) to improve the security of data. The SG with SCADA is facilitated by data acquisitions which includes the meter reading, system conditions, etc. that are monitored and transmitted at regular intervals in real time. This paper reviews the modern technologies used in smart grid communication based on IEEE 802.15.4 standard to the SG and how it is modified to ensure effective, efficient and economical and secured communication of the huge real time data from the smart meters

Prospects of renewable energy in semi-arid region

Continuous usage of fossil fuels and other conventional resources to meet the growing demand has resulted in increased energy crisis and greenhouse gas emissions. Hence, it is essential to use renewable energy sources for more reliable, effective, sustainable and pollution free transmission and distribution networks. Therefore, to facilitate large-scale integration of renewable energy in particular wind and solar photovoltaic (PV) energy, this paper presents the feasibility analysis for semi-arid climate and finds the most suitable places in North East region of Victoria for renewable energy generation. For economic and environmental analysis, Hybrid Optimization Model for Electric Renewables (HOMER) has used to investigate the prospects of wind and solar energy considering the Net Present Cost (NPC), Cost of Energy (COE) and Renewable fraction (RF). Six locations are selected from North East region of Victoria and simulations are performed. From the feasibility analysis, it can be concluded that Mount Hotham is one of the most suitable locations for wind energy generation while Wangaratta is the most suitable location for solar energy generation. Mount Hotham is also the best suitable locations in North East region for hybrid power systems i.e., combination of both wind and solar energy generation

Potentialities of renewable energy in Victoria, Australia

In utility power system, electricity demand is being covered largely by fossil fueled power generation, which contributes high level of GHG (greenhouse gas) emission and causes global warming worldwide. In order to reduce GHG emission level, most of the countries in the world targeting towards green energy that is power generation from RE (renewable energy) sources. In this paper, it is considered to study prospects of RE sources in particular, solar and wind in Victoria State which are abundant as compared to other sources of renewable. The wind and solar energy feasibility study and sensitivity analysis has been done for Victoria with the aid of HOMER (hybrid optimization model of electric renewable) simulation software. From the study, it has clearly evicted that wind energy combinational HPS (hybrid power system) has more contribution, and high potential than solar PV (photovoltaic) systems for a particular location. This study also investigates the influences of energy storage in the proposed HPS

Significance of storage on solar photovoltaic System—A residential load case study in Australia

Energy storage is an essential part in effective utilization of Renewable Energy (RE). Most RE sources cannot provide constant energy supply and introduce a potential unbalance in generation and demand, especially in off-peak periods when RE generates more energy and in peak period when load demand rises too high. Storage allows intermittent sources like solar Photovoltaic (PV) to address timely load demand and adds flexibility in load management. This paper analyses the significance of storage for residential load considering solar PV as RE generator. The significance of storage was evaluated in off-grid or stand alone and grid connected configurations. Moreover it outlined the significance of storage in terms of environment and economics by comparing the Renewable Fraction (RF), Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emission, Cost of Energy (COE) and Net Present Cost (NPC). Investigation showed that storage has positive influences on both (off-grid and grid connected) configurations by improving PV utilization. It was found that in grid connected configuration storage reduced 46.47% of GHG emission, reduced COE, NPC and improved RF compared to the system without storage

Analysis of harmonics with renewable energy integration into the distribution network

Integration of large-scale renewable energy (RE) sources in particular, wind and solar energy into the grid introduces current and voltage harmonics due to power electronics devices as well as inverter connected into the RE sources. Ensuring adequate harmonics in the line currents of RE integrated power system is one of the biggest challenges today. Therefore, this study investigates the potential impacts in particular current and voltage harmonics causes due to large-scale integration of RE into the Berserker Street Feeder, Frenchville Substation under Rockhampton distribution network (DN), Central Queensland, Australia. From the model analyses, it has clearly evident that harmonics across the network increases with the increase of RE integration and causes uncertainties in the feeder as well as in the DN. This study also explores possible mitigation measures and it has seen that optimized STATCOM effectively reducing the adverse harmonic impacts of integrating large-scale RE into the DN

Influences of Wind Energy Integration into the Distribution Network

Wind energy is one of the most promising renewable energy sources due to its availability and climate-friendly attributes. Large-scale integration of wind energy sources creates potential technical challenges due to the intermittent nature that needs to be investigated and mitigated as part of developing a sustainable power system for the future. Therefore, this study developed simulation models to investigate the potential challenges, in particular voltage fluctuations, zone substation, and distribution transformer loading, power flow characteristics, and harmonic emissions with the integration of wind energy into both the high voltage (HV) and low voltage (LV) distribution network (DN). From model analysis, it has been clearly indicated that influences of these problems increase with the increased integration of wind energy into both the high voltage and low voltage distribution network; however, the level of adverse impacts is higher in the LV DN compared to the HV DN

Protection of interconnected transmission network using phasor measurement unit scheme

The demand of load is increasing everyday but the transmission resources are very limited because of various challenges and constraints faced during power system monitoring. This insufficiency of transmission resources had lead to reduced operational margins for power system operators. Further due to this heavy loading the stability limit has reached it maximum value. Therefore this issue of deregulation has lead for the development of wide monitoring, protection and control rather than traditional scheme. This paper proposes an adaptive protection scheme which is based on phasor measurement unit (PMU) for the protection of power system network. Here positive sequence voltage and currents of transmission lines are used to identify the location of fault. The fault location is located at maximum speed and accuracy with the help of PMU’s placed over a wide area transmission network. This paper shows results of IEEE 5 bus system which is been simulated on MATLAB/SIMULINK platform for various fault conditions

Distributed multi-agent based coordinated power management and control strategy for microgrids with distributed energy resources

In this paper, a distributed peer-to-peer multi-agent framework is proposed for managing the power sharing in microgrids with power electronic inverter-interfaced distributed energy resources (DERs). Recently, the introduction of electric vehicles (EVs) has gained much popularity by offering vehicle-to-home (V2H) technologies to support the sustainable operation of microgrids. Since microgrids often exhibit volatile characteristics due to natural intermittency and uncertainty, it is necessary to maintain the balancing of generation and demand through the proper management of power sharing. Therefore, the main purpose of this paper is to design an agent-based control framework to ensure the coordinated power management within the microgrids through effective utilization of EVs. The required agent communication framework is adhered to the graph theory where the control agents interact with each other using local as well as neighboring information and their distributed coordination effectively steers the proportional sharing of real and reactive powers among the inverter-interfaced EVs to maintain the stability of microgrids. The well known Ziegler-Nichols method is used to tune the proportional-integral (PI) controller of the inner current control loop within each individual control agent to perform necessary shared control tasks. A microgrid with solar photovoltaic (PV) and V2H systems is chosen to illustrate the results and it is seen that the proposed scheme improves the system performance in a smarter way through information exchange. Furthermore, the proposed framework is also validated by a comparison with an existing traditional approach and it is found that, the proposed scheme provides excellent robust and faster performance

Characteristics and applications of energy storage system to power network - A review

Maintaining reliability and stability of a power systems in transmission and distribution level becomes a big challenge in present scenario. Grid operators are always responsible to maintain equilibrium between available power generation and demand of end users. Maintaining grid balance is a bigger issue, in case of any unexpected generation shortage or grid disturbance or integration of any renewable energy sources like wind and solar power in the energy mix. In order to compensate such imbalance and to facilitate more renewable energy sources with the grid, energy storage system (ESS) started to be playing an important role with the advancement of the state of the art technology. ESS can also help to get reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emission by means of integrating more renewable energy sources to the grid. There are various types of Energy Storage (ES) technologies which are being used in power systems network from large scale (above 50MW) to small scale (up to 100KW). Based on the characteristics, each storage technology has their own merits and demerits. This paper carried out extensive review study and verifies merits and demerits of each storage technology and identifies the suitable technology for the future. This paper also has conducted feasibility study with the aid of E-SelectTM tool for various ES technologies in applications point of view at different grid locations. This review study helps to evaluate feasible ES technology for a particular electrical application and also helps to develop smart hybrid storage system for grid applications in efficient way

Mitigation strategies to minimize potential technical challenges of renewable energy integration

A recent issue of increasing public focus is the need for robust, sustainable and climate friendly power systems that are intelligent, reliable and green. The intermittent nature of renewable energy generation and the associated power electronic inverters creates a number of potential challenges in integrating large-scale renewable energy (RE) into the grid that affects power quality of the distribution network. Therefore, this study initially, investigates the potential technical impacts in particular voltage regulation, active and reactive power variations, transformer loading and current and voltage harmonics causes with RE integration. Then, to reduce the level of impacts observed, STATCOM and energy storage system (both optimised) were integrated into the network that ensures a smooth power supply to the customers. As a case study, the Berserker Street Feeder, Frenchville Substation under Rockhampton distribution network, Central Queensland, Australia has been considered. Similar analyses also carried out with the IEEE 13 bus network to investigate the potential technical challenges of RE integration and identify suitable mitigation measures. Results shows that integration of both optimised STATCOM and energy storage enhances the overall power quality of the power network as it improves voltage regulation, power distribution, and transformer utilisation and reduce total harmonic distortion of the power network