Design and implementation of a Real-time energy management system for an isolated Microgrid: Experimental validation

This paper deals with the feasibility of power flow management for a hybrid renewable energy system and its impact on reducing energy losses and increasing the reliability of the microgrid. The integration of multi-renewable energy sources leads to techno-economic challenges such as power quality, voltage stability, and microgrid efficiency. A hardware prototype for a real-time EMS that automatically selects the appropriate power source to feed load, whether from the three main sources (wind, fuel cells, and PV) or the backup sources (batteries and electric vehicle) is implemented and experimentally Validated. The proposed smart EMS is implemented using the Altera Cyclone IV EP4CE6 FPGA Board. FPGA is a highly flexible and reprogrammable logic device that will make it easier for consumers to implement future smart EMS with different scenarios according to needs and the type of household loads. Analog to digital converter (ADC) is responsible for the communication between the FPGA board and the voltage and current sensors. Smart EMS simulation model is implemented using the MATLAB^®/Simulink^®. The results demonstrate the high dynamic response speed and suitability of the FPGA for real-time, more effective and flexible energy management, better voltage stability and longer battery lifetime. Comparing the laboratory results with the simulated results proves the high efficiency in terms of response speed in changes of the sources that feed the load. The results also show the effectiveness of the proposed system, as the percentage of error between the experimental and simulation results does not exceed 3.16%.