DC Microgrid

Abstract— World Poverty has been a well-documented societal problem. While no

known one-fix solution exists, studies have shown a strong link between energy access
and level of poverty. There is also a direct correlation between education and
overcoming poverty. The village of Toggo in Uganda, Africa is just one case struggling
with poverty. The majority of the issues villagers there face stems from a lack of reliable
local power. This paper discusses in detail how we have developed a DC microgrid
reference design that will aid Toggo International Children’s Center in their quest for
education by providing reliable electricity generation. This microgrid has several
distinguishable features which include PV generation, energy storage, battery charging
ability, and transmittable power flow throughout the system all complete with an
optimized and robust energy management system. This reference design will aid in the
solution to world poverty by providing reliable power to enable the betterment of
education, health and wellness.

Keywords-
 1.INTRODUCTION
First of all, Overview of the microgrid with the advent of the
distributed generation. Microgrid is a simple term for a large and
complex system. Essentially, we are designing an electricity
generation system that will need to be fully self-sufficient, reliable,
and contain its own energy management system.
We shall go back to the days of the Nikola Tesla so where actually
he proposed the actually AC system. All those debate will be taken
care of. But at that time with the bioelectronics was not available.
For this reason DC microgrid actually put a back set but with the
advent of the power electronics now again DC microgrid comes.
So now why microgrid and why do microgrid matters.
Of course the reason is that with the greater enhancement of the
distributed generation.
Now, we can say that microgrid is a scaled-down version of the
centralized power system. It can generate, distribute and control
power in a small community. It is reliable and flexible. Microgrids
are designed to provide uninterrupted power to the load demand
for a customer with the changing power need. And in DC microgrid
only the voltage is an issue.

Why it is more secure than the centralized grid?

The power generated locally and in its smaller size make microgrid
easier to keep safe both physically and given the right control
system from the cyber threats as well as protecting it from
transmission system collapsing.

Features of Microgrid
 It is resilent
Microgrid do not depend on the traditional grid and can be used to
supply critical load in case of the grid system is disconnected. Like
in 2012 we in India it has a catastrophic failure because actually the
UP took huge amount of power and whole India grid was collapsed.

 It can save Money

It can save money because you need not have to put long
transmission line and its maintenance cost you can get rid of. So
using sophisticated software to monitor, operate and optimize the
power usage based on the demand utility price and other factors,
will power

 It can store and Incorporate renewable Energy

Major feature of the microgrid is that it can store because of the
small size it is possible to have a proper energy management and
incorporate renewable energy. It also reduce carbon emission as
often required by the government regulations. So this is quite
actually quite fit for our today's requirement.
How do microgrid work?
An advanced control system enables microgrid components to
operate in a coordinated, optimized way.
The utility grid-Microgrid can be islanded or disconnected from the
traditional grid during the fault. So that if any type of fault occur so
you can cut your system from the traditional grids and you can
operate with the critical load depending on the availability of your
power on that local grid.
Energy Storage-Energy storage element, so you shall use this
abbreviation quite frequent which is ES that is most of the cases we
will have a batteries stored electricity for use for keeping the
power in hand that will give autonomy.
Controllable Generation- Important aspect of the DC microgrid is
or the microgrid is that controllable generations provide stable and
necessary levels of the voltage. In DC system we have a DC BUS and
only require to to maintain its voltage every point as prescribed
within a limit of tolerance.

Microgrid vs Conventional Power System

Let us discuss about DC microgrid versus conventional power
systems and similarity and the differences.
Central power, the central conventional power generation that is
CCPG is an electric power production by central station power
plant that provide bulk power and since requires to be placed away
from the load centre because that much of the land is not available
in the load centre. Most of them uses large fossil-fired gas or the
coal boiler nuclear boiler to produce steam that drives the turbine
generator. In some cases large hydro may be used depending on
the availability of that large tank and other facilities.
These plants require costly management of large infrastructures
because it has a lot of power plant instrumentations and lot of
plant you require lot of water and its cooling. So huge
infrastructures.
And are susceptible to unreliability and instability under many
forceable events. For example huge landslide may break the dam
or it may be earthquake or the enemy attack, all those things. Or
even a cyber attack and we may put all the turbine out of its
synchronism. So for this reason this has got a vulnerability in
unforceable circumstances.

STRUCTURE OF A CONVENTIONAL POWER GRID SYSTEM

So structure of the conventional central power grid can be
described below as the conventional power grid , an
interconnected network for delivering electricity from supply to the
consumers consisting of :
 generating stations that produce electrical power,
 high voltage transmission lines that carry power from distant
sources to the demand centers and
 has distribution line that connect individual customers.
 So we have a central generation. Then we have a transmission
network. Generally if we want to send a power 1 kilometre away
you are supposed to step up 1 KV. So you are sending a power in
100 kilometre away you are supposed to step it up to 110 KV. Then
transformer center. So you have the transformer. Then it will be
stepping down. Then generally it will be located in a switchgear,
that is outside the city. So we do not want to bring a very high
voltage inside the city. So thereafter it will be taken underground
and we have a small distribution transformer and feeders feeding
the load or the consumers
 Microgrid Architecture
The basic architecture of Microgrid System is shown in fig.

It comprises of

 Micro Generation

 Energy Storage System

 Load and control system

 Power Electronics
Interfacing Converter

Basic Architecture of DC Microgrid

So we have the basic architectures of the microgrid is shown in the

above figure and it comprises of micro generations.
It may be generating 100 kilowatt or 200 kilowatt, something like
that. And storage system since size of the storage is not very large.
And thereafter we have a load and the control system. We have to
segregate the critical and the non critical load and accordingly
actual tariff will be fixed. So for this reason we have a storage
element that is basically maybe a critical load and we may have the
some lights for ornamental purpose that is non-critical load we may
switch it off.
So and thereafter power electronic interfacing converters because
we may have a different load require for different kind of voltage
and frequency, maybe in case of the DC microgrid and if it is DC
microgrid it may require a different kind of DC voltages. For this
reason we require power electronics interface and converter. So
this is the small architecture of the microgrid.

INTERCONNECTION OF MICROGRID
Microgrids are designed to generate power at distribution voltage
level along with utilizations of waste heat, they have restricted
energy handling capability. For this reason the maximum capacity
normally restricted approximately is 10 MVA as per the IEEE
recommendation. So that is also quite big power from the Indian
perspectives.
In microgrid it is possible to supply large amount of load from
several microgrid through a common distribution network like
splitting the load pocket into the several controllable local loads.
That to localize, this is called localization of the load. In this way
microgrid can be connected form much larger power pools for
emitting bulk power demand.
 For interconnected microgrid, each centralized control must
execute its control in close coordination with the neighboring
microgrids. Thus an interconnected microgrid would achieve
greater stability and controllability with the distributed control
structure.

Now interconnection of the microgrid to the main grid have the

following importance:

 There is a point of injection which is called point of common

coupling. That is availability of the grid definitely. we may put
a microgrid in isolated places where there is no availability of
maingrid so no question of grid connectivity arises. So
availability, highly available power grid may acts as a
additional source for the microgrid.
  Direct connections of AC microgrid to a large power grid
facilitate stable operation but only if the power grid acts as a
steep source to the microgrid. When using a renewable
energy sources a grid connection may allow reducing the need
for the energy storage in the microgrid. For this actually it is
quite helpful because there is a concept of autonomy. That is
why we have a mostly solar microgrid and ultimately we may
consider that there is a rainy day and thus generation of the
power will be low and for this reason we require to design the
battery size.
 So if we have that grid connectivity then we may consider
battery accordingly so if power may go or power may go off
throughout the day, 1 day power backup may be sufficient but
if it is islanding mode then cost of the battery will increase.
Most of the cases they have around 20% or 10% of the loads
are the critical load.
 Thus, grid connection may allow to reduce the investment in
the local generation.
 One reason is the economics for interconnection of the
microgrid with utility grid.

TYPES OF MICROGRID
There are generally three types of microgrids:
1. DC MICROGRID
2. AC MICROGRID
3. HYBRID MICROGRID OR AC-DC MICROGRID
AC Micro Grid: In AC microgrid, all DERs and loads are connected to
a common AC bus. Block diagram of AC and DC microgrid is shown
in figure 3.5. DC generating units as well as energy storage will be
connected to the AC bus via DC-to-AC inverters, and further, AC-to-
DC rectifiers are used for supplying DC loads.

AC/ DC Microgrid :This idea offers a new paradigm for the

definition of the distributed generation operation. To the utility
purpose the microgrid can be considered as a controlled cell of the
power system. To the customer the microgrid can be planned to
meet their special requirements such as, enhancement of local
reliability, reduction of feeder losses, local voltages support,
increased efficiency through waste heat recovery scheme, voltage
sag correction. The microgrid or distribution network subsystem
will create less trouble to the utility network than the conventional
micro generation if there is proper and intelligent coordination of
micro generation and loads.
POWER ELECTRONICS FOR A MICROGRID
Role of the power electronics and distributed energy that
consisting of distributed energy sources and the storage element
that will be the distributed energy system. And then power
electronics in AC microgrids, converter topologies in AC microgrid
and power electronics.
Since we are using a DC microgrid ,we get rid of many AC to DC
converter, as many as 3, 4 AC to DC converter in a particular
topology may be required.
Now, role of the power electronics in distributed energy system.
These are the PV, solar PV or wind or micro turbine fuel cell. It may
be diesel IC engine or the battery flywheel or the any other storage
devices, thermal storage devices. Then it depends on if it is a wind
then it is AC and if it is a battery it is DC. If it is a solar it is DC. So it
can be AC to DC or DC to DC converter.
AC to DC converter if the input is your variable AC for this you
need to convert into the DC .
And if the input is variable DC for example, a solar PV cell it will
generate DC output voltage and current depending on the
radiation and the temperature of the atmosphere. So for this
reason we require to have a DC to DC converter.
Thereafter, essentially we require a DC to regulated AC converter.
And generally these are PULSE WIDTH MODULATION (PWM)
converter and thus we will be injecting harmonics into the system
and their topological advancement.

Instead of using two level inverter we go for the multilevel inverter

and thereafter we will have to filter out those harmonics, especially
high frequency harmonics, and ultimately we have a point of
common coupling.
And these are the area of the utility where it will interact with the
grid and we may have a local load also and we can dispatch power
in bidirectional way. Now, for the storage system also, bidirectional
flow between the storage and the utility is required. So we can
charge or discharge battery for the system as desired.
So this is in short the overall role of the power electronics here.
This block is the power electronics. So power electronics interface
accepts power from Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) and
converters. It is required for maintaining voltage or variable voltage
and frequency. The generalized block diagram representation of
the power electronics interface with distributed system is shown in
the figure. So input can be of different voltage and frequency and
making it in a standardized way we require the power electronics.
In DC microgrid, power converter used to interface the source and
the load and also an interface to AC grids. The DC microgrid
decouples the frequency, voltage and phase of the various AC
generations and consumption element in the microgrid by use of
suitable power electronics converter. The interface between each
energy sources and DC bus has a power electronics converter to
maintain a required DC bus voltage.

HARDWARE DESCRIPTION
The hardware components that were taken for this project are :
1.solar panel
2.Power conversion circuits
3.Battery
4.Comparator
5.Miscellaneous.

Additionally, some other hardware components were implemented

which will be discussed are the instrumentation voltage and
current sensing circuits.

 SOLAR PANEL
A solar panel is actually a collection of solar (or photovoltaic) cells,
which can be used to generate electricity through photovoltaic effect.
These cells are arranged in a grid-like pattern on the surface of solar
panels.
Installation of solar panels in microgrid helps in combating the
harmful emissions of greenhouse gases and thus helps
reduce global warming. Solar panels do not lead to any form
of pollution and are clean. They also decrease our reliance on
fossil fuels (which are limited) and traditional power sources.
The solar panel used for our project is of 12V with good efficiency
and also has a longer life.

 Power Conversion Electronics

The power conversion electronics consist of :
 Buck regulator
 Boost Regulator
 Charging circuit
 Disconnect Switch
 Buck Regulator and Charging Disconnect Switch
The buck circuit used in our Project is DROK (8A) constant voltage,
constant current buck converter.

A buck converter is a DC-to-DC power converter which steps

down voltage from its input to its output. It is a class of
switched-mode power supply typically containing at least two
semiconductors and at least one energy storage element, a
capacitor, inductor, or the two in combination.
WORKING OF BUCK REGULATOR
The main working principle of buck converter is that the inductor in
the input circuit resists sudden variations in input current. When
switch is ON the inductor stores energy in the form of magnetic
energy and discharges it when switch is closed. The capacitor in the
output circuit is assumed large enough that the time constant of RC
circuit in the output stage is high. The large time constant
compared to switching period ensures a constant output voltage
Vo(t) = Vo(constant)

In Buck Regulator Kit:

Firstly, we have to set a constant current and constant voltage
output by adjusting the duty cycle of the buck circuit.
This is used for the charging of the battery. As the battery is low on
charge we apply a constant current to charge it and let the voltage
float accordingly. As the battery charge increases so does its
internal resistance.
As the resistance increases the current flow to the battery will
decrease. At this point we switch to a constant voltage to finish
charging the battery. This is known as Constant Current Constant
Voltage charge method.
Additionally, by turning the voltage and current adjustment screws,
we also track the maximum power point of the solar panel by
adjusting the output impedance so that the load equivalent seen by
the solar panel is equal to the output impedance of the solar panel.

 Boost Regulator and Diode for load support

The boost circuit used in our Project is DROK 150W for power
supply module.

A boost converter is a DC-to-DC power converter that steps up

voltage from its input to its output. It is a class of switched-mode
power supply containing at least two semiconductors and at least
one energy storage element: a capacitor, inductor, or the two in
combination.
WORKING OF BOOST REGULATOR
The main working principle of boost converter is that the inductor
in the input circuit resists sudden variations in input current. When
switch is OFF the inductor stores energy in the form of magnetic
energy and discharges it when switch is closed. The capacitor in the
output circuit is assumed large enough that the time constant of RC
circuit in the output stage is high. The large time constant
compared to switching period ensures a constant output voltage
Vo(t) = Vo(constant).

In Boost Regulator Kit:

The output voltage adjustment on the boost circuit is used to
regulate the voltage. We set this value to be around 16.8 volts. This
gives us approximately 1 volt below the solar panel’s maximum
power voltage of 18.5 volts with some room for changes in the
solar panel due to ambient weather conditions.
The diodes connected to the positive output of the boost regulator
function to prevent current flow from the boost regulator to the
load bus until the load bus voltage from the solar panel falls below
the set 16.8 volts from the boost regulator.
The voltage from the solar panel will lower automatically if there is
not enough sun light, or the load current demands exceed what the
panel can produce at it maximum power voltage. If this happens
this will cause the diodes to forward bias and allow current to flow
from the boost circuit, originating from the battery, to the load bus.

 Energy Storage in the Form of a Battery

Some form of energy storage is needed to make the system run
more efficiently by mitigating the intermittency of renewable
energy. In a standalone system such as ours, energy storage is
mandatory in order to provide the client with a useable and flexible
system.

The addition of a battery as our energy storage element provides a

number of benefits:
It allows us to operate the solar generation optimally by giving us a
place to store excess energy. This excess energy is then preserved
until a time when there is not enough sun shine to provide power
to the loads.
We opted to go with a sealed lead acid (SLA) battery and the
capacity of the battery was chosen based off of the power
demands of the equipment.
In our project we wired the battery in between the buck regulator
and the boost regulator and acts as both a storage for excess
energy and a power supply when needed. This battery serves as
our grid and is the basis for the energy management and demand
response functions that our system incorporates. By building
instrumentation circuits that measure voltage and currents
throughout our system, we can know the status of our entire
system as it relates to our battery.

 Current and Voltage Measurements

The current and voltage measurements are an integral part of the
system. The ability to accurately sample voltage and current
measurements are the key to providing accurate state of charge
measurements for the battery.
The state of charge measurements are important in determining
when non-critical electrical equipment must be powered down to
preserve the battery to provide up to 2 days of battery autonomy.

 Current Sensor
The initial current measurements were sampled using an
ACS712(Current Sensor) that work on Hall Effect.
These sensors can provide accurate current measurements within
specified ranges, typically between 1-3 Amps. While the range of
current should suffice for the project prototype, we felt the need to
begin working on sensor circuitry for the deployable prototype.
The voltage measurements off the current sense resistor can then
be multiplied a thousand to obtain very accurate values of current.
The issue with this method is twofold: signal noise and too small of
a voltage for our ADC to accurately measure.
To rectify this problem, we connected the voltage across the
current sense resistor to an instrumentation amplifier with a gain
of nearly 500. The results were showed accurate ADC
measurements of voltage that were then converted into current
with 10% tolerance and measured current is showed.
The voltage measurements were taken using resistive voltage
dividers.

Future Work
The major glaring needs for the hardware components are the
power conversion electronics. These need to be automated. We
can do this by purchasing more robust (also more expensive)
power electronic circuits. We need these for two reasons: first, we
need a more powerful model of a buck and boost system so we can
scale up the prototype to 300 watts. Secondly, and more
importantly, we need to have an open-loop buck circuit which will
allow us to implement a feedback system to control the output via
the duty cycle with a Arduino Uno Board.
APPLICATIONS OF DC MICROGRID
Now despite of the widespread use of the AC power produced by
the large centralized power stations spanning 20th century or as
well as a 21st century the DC power continued to show its presence
at few restricted places such as communication system,
communication tower require the DC power, control and
protection applications of the power plants and substations if we
go to any power plant we will find huge battery bank to start the
alternator. Because that field current should come from that
storage element once to start it, the electricity for the system
requires a backup power and that backup excitation current comes
from DC.
And though modern railway drives are AC but locomotive only in
the local trains are DC type and fractions. Because of historical
reason since that the same order was running and we know that DC
motor control very well. All the led machines which was running
has a longivity may be actually 50 years they are still running that is
by the DC motors ultimately we are equal to retrofit it. And thus we
find that power electronics application of rectifier there and
industrial drives and this is why DC finds application still because of
the high starting torque in railways because DC series motor with a
high starting torque thereafter we will change it to the shunt
motor rate because of its torque speed characteristics which is
moreover constant .Thus we can have a wide range of speed
variation with a constant torque.

Also we know in telecommunications or mobile charger DC finds its

application and daily phone towers are DC controlled. And the
protections of the power system units (a relay) and other elements
require DC power supply.
It is also required in the industrial system due to wider range in
speed variation with constant torque throughout high to low
speed. So, these are the, few advantage since DC microgrid.