Chapter 1

Introduction

Deregulation of the electric power industry imposes requirements for more

responsive economic dispatch for dynamic balance between energy generation and
loads. Concern about environmental impacts and shortages of fossil fuels have
increased interest in clean and renewable energy generation, including wind power,
photovoltaic, hydroelectric power, fuel cells, and microturbines. Wind energy and
photovoltaic are among the most promising renewable energy resources, yet these
sources are intermittent and unpredictable and cannot be used for reliable economic
dispatch; they have low inertias and cannot provide power quality support for the
grid. Microgrids are small-scale power networks that are exploited to supply local
loads in small geographical spans. Microgrids have various applications such as
remote villages, hospitals, universities and educational institutes, police stations,
business and residential buildings, shipboard power systems, military bases, and
ships. The microgrid concept, with its local control and power quality support,
potentially allows for reliable and predictable operation of renewable energy gen-
erators, and for scalable addition of new generation and loads. Microgrids facilitate
the reliable integration of renewable energy resources such as wind and solar
generation and fuel cells through distributed generators (DGs). The microgrid
operates on the idea of autonomous subsystems composed of small local areas with
dedicated control systems that provide guaranteed power quality support to the
distribution grid. The microgrid concept potentially enables high penetration of
DGs without requiring redesign or reengineering of the distribution system itself,
and was designed to lower the cost and improve the reliability of small-scale
distribution systems. Current local control methods for microgrids do not always
provide adequate power quality support for the grid or reliable power generation
profiles for renewable energy sources [1–4].
Conventionally, microgrids are spanned on the traditional AC distribution net-
works that supply AC loads. These microgrids with AC electrical infrastructure are
called AC microgrids. Recently, DC microgrids have also gained much attention
due to their advantages. DC microgrids exploit a DC electrical infrastructure.
Energy resources are integrated into the microgrid using various power electronics
© Springer International Publishing AG 2017 1
A. Bidram et al., Cooperative Synchronization in Distributed Microgrid Control,
Advances in Industrial Control, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-50808-5_1