IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON APPLIED SUPERCONDUCTIVITY, VOL. 31, NO.
8, NOVEMBER 2021
Event-Triggered Mechanism Based Control Method
of SMES to Improve Microgrids Stability Under
Extreme Conditions
Heping Peng, Le Luan , Zhong Xu, Wenxiong Mo, and Yong Wang
Abstract—Microgrids with multiple converters suffer from ex-
cessive pressure on the communication network during traditional
voltage and frequency regulation control. This paper proposed
an event-triggered control strategy based superconducting mag-
netic energy storage (SMES) scheme to improve AC microgrids
stability under successive disconnection of sources or step change
of loads. By designing an event-triggered mechanism, each con-
verter in the microgrid sends its own information to SMES in a
non-periodic way. Then the control method of bus voltage and
frequency regulation using SMES is constructed, which enables
SMES to update its control mode. The microgrid model is estab-
lished in PSCAD/EMTDC, and two cases of extreme conditions are
conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Index Terms—Microgrid, SMES, stability.
I. INTRODUCTION
HE microgrids can integrate various distributed power
T sources, energy storage devices, loads and modern control
technologies. However, the DGs connected to microgrid through
electronic power converters, which has a relatively low inertia
than the traditional utility AC grid [1]. In extreme conditions,
such as natural disasters, bad weather, cyber-attacks and failure
[2], the unplanned islanding of the microgrid as well as the
successive off-gird of the DGs and high-power load step change
can occur in the system, even lead to system collapse. In order
to ensure the normal operation of critical load, it is necessary
to study the microgrid stability enhancement strategy under
extreme conditions.
The energy storage system is installed in the microgrid com-
pensate the dynamic unbalanced power of system [1], [3].
Compared with the other energy storage system (ESS), the
SMES with high power density, fast response, and long-life cycle
is potential to improve the voltage and frequency stability of
microgrids under extreme conditions [4]–[6]. A 150 kJ/50 kW
conduction-cooled HTS SMES have been developed in [4]. Ref
Manuscript received April 7, 2021; revised May 5, 2021, May 14, 2021, and
May 17, 2021; accepted May 19, 2021. Date of publication June 23, 2021; date
of current version September 29, 2021. This work was supported by the Science
and Technology Project of China Southern Power Grid Company Ltd. under
Grant 080037KK52170012/GZJKJXM20170023. (Corresponding author: Le
Luan.)
The authors are with the Electric Power Test Research Institute of Guangzhou
Power Supply Bureau, Guangdong Power Grid Company Ltd., Guangzhou
510410, China (e-mail: yazhui869396@163.com).
Color versions of one or more figures in this article are available at
https://doi.org/10.1109/TASC.2021.3090379.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TASC.2021.3090379
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5403604
[5] has studied the application of SMES in smoothing power
fluctuation caused by mode switching. The SMES has also been
applied in hybrid energy storage system with the energy type of
storage system in microgrid [6].
In microgrid, the distributed control of ESS has the advan-
tages of the seamless real-time operation, no single point of
failure [7]. However, with the number of the DGs increases,
the degree of every microgrid agent may increase accordingly,
and may inevitably suffer from the bandwidth and computing
power constraints [8]. The event-triggered mechanism based dis-
tributed control can reduce the communication and computing
burdens effectively [9]. Ref. [10] designed the event-triggered
based multiagent optimization in a hybrid energy system for
coordination of different energy resources with considering the
demand response.
Under the extreme conditions of microgrid, involving large
disturbance events at the source, network, and load ends of
the microgrid, the SMES can be controlled based on the event-
triggered mechanism. The operation mode of SMES will switch
as the state change of difference energy resource and loads in
microgrid. Thus, the communication and information exchange
are only needed when the event is triggered, and the system
stability is also improved by the proposed controlled SMES.
II. MICROGRID AND CONTROL SYSTEM
The topology of AC microgrid is shown in Fig. 1. The
microgrid system utilizes the master-slave control mode. The
distributed generation (DG) in microgrid is connected to the AC
bus of microgrid through three-phase voltage source inverters
(VSI). When the grid-connected switch BRKmain is closed, the
microgrid operates in grid-connected mode. When the switch
is off, the microgrid switches to islanded operation mode. In
gird-connected operation mode, the utility grid can regulate
the bus frequency and voltage of the microgrid system. The
photovoltaic and wind power generation system are controlled
by active P-Q control mode. In islanded operation mode, the
V-F control is applied for the controller of micro-turbine which
is the main power supply of islanded mode microgrid. However,
during the mode switching process, there will be a large power
gap between the generation system and consumptions. The
change of PI control outer loop can lead to sluggish response
and a deteriorated bus voltage and frequency characteristics.
Under the extreme conditions, the SMES can discharge to
compensate the insufficient power. Therefore, in grid-connected
mode, the SMES operates in standby mode. If the residual energy
 5403604
Fig. 1. The topology of AC microgrid used in this article.
Fig. 2. The control block diagram of SMES DC-DC chopper based on pro-
posed method.
of SMES reaches its limit, it will be charged to the predefined
value. In islanded mode, the SMES can output the reference
power (ESMES˙ref ) according to the center controller to supply
the reference power (PSMES˙ref ) during extreme conditions. The
DC-DC chopper and VSI interface the SMES to the AC bus,
the VSI of SMES is operated in Vdc-Q control, which control
the DC side voltage and the reactive power of VSI. The storage
energy ESMES and maximum output power PSMES˙max of SMES
can be given as:
1 communication and control signals are updated. The flowchart
ESMES = LSC i2SMES
2
PSMES_max = Udc × iSMES
where LSC is the inductance of the superconducting coil (SC),
iSMES is the real-time current of SC, and Udc is the dc-link
side voltage of the DC-DC chopper of SMES. Hence, the higher
the DC side voltage, the higher the maximum output power of
SMES. The charging and discharging current of SMES will be
controlled by the DC-DC converter as shown in Fig. 2. The
control strategy will be introduced in detail in the next section.
III. THE PROPOSED EVENT-TRIGGERED BASED CONTROL
METHOD OF SMES
Although the above control can achieve effective regulation
of bus voltage as well as bus frequency by SMES, it requires
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON APPLIED SUPERCONDUCTIVITY, VOL. 31, NO. 8, NOVEMBER 2021
Fig. 3. The flowchart of the event-triggered based control method algorithm.
periodic communication between different DGs, the utility grid
and SMES. Especially when the system is in normal gird-
connected mode, the utility grid can regulate the bus voltage
magnitude and frequency, this cycle communication process is
not necessary. In addition, it occupies a lot of communication
resources and increases the computational burden, which is a
passive control method with poor economy. Based on the pre-
vious discussed SMES control strategy, this section introduces
an event-triggered control method based on cycle communica-
tion. The event triggering mechanism is related to the states of
breakers. It only communicates and updates the control output
references when event occurs, which is an active control method
with application prospects.
In order to avoid the occurrence of countless event triggers
in a finite time, a non-periodic event-triggered control based on
the traditional fixed-period sampling control will be used. Set
the sampling period be h and the trigger moment be the true
subset of the sampling moments {0, h, 2h, …}. The trigger
moment is determined by state change of breakers, and then the
(1) of the proposed even-triggered based control method of SMES
is shown in Fig. 3.
(2) In grid-connected mode microgrid, the detection unit only
needs to detect the state of grid connected breaker BRKmain . At
this time, the fluctuation of load and DG output is mitigated by
the utility grid, and the SMES is standby. Once the grid con-
nection switch is disconnected, the disconnection event will be
triggered, and SMES will receive the measured grid connection
power value at instant of k − 1. Meanwhile, the control mode
of SMES will change to track the update reference power. As
shown in Fig. 2, the BRKmain signal turn OFF and the control
switching signal 1 (SS1) change from 0 to 1, and the control
mode changes from the energy recovery control to the power
tracking control.
Next, after the unplanned disconnection, further disturbances
may occur under extreme conditions, such as DGs failure,
 PENG et al.: EVENT-TRIGGERED MECHANISM BASED CONTROL METHOD OF SMES TO IMPROVE MICROGRIDS
TABLE I
MICROGRID PARAMETERS
Fig. 4. The working condition timeline of case 1.
high-power loads switching. In this paper, take the wind power
generation off-grid as example, the detection unit needs to detect
the state of wind power generation breaker and the high-power
load breaker in islanded mode microgrid. For the state detection
of wind power generation breaker (BRKwt ), once the BRKwt
turn OFF which means the wind turbine off-grid due to various
failure, the wind power value at instant of k − 1 will transfer to
the SMES. In Fig. 2, the switching signal 2 (SS2) changes from
0 to 2 and outputs the wind power Pwt .
Additionally, the state detection of load consists of two situa-
tions of load step up and load step down. Once the load breaker
BRKload turn OFF, the load step down event trigger, and the load
demand value at k − 1 will transfer to the SMES unit. Once the
BRKload turn ON, the load step up event trigger, and the load
demand value at k + 1 will transfer to the SMES unit. In Fig. 2,
the SS2 will change from 0 to 1.
IV. THE PROPOSED EVENT-TRIGGERED BASED CONTROL
METHOD OF SMES
In order to verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the
proposed control method, a microgrid model with DGs, loads
and SMES is built in PSCAD/EMTDC as same topology in Fig 1.
The system parameters are shown in Table I. The comparison of
without SMES and with the proposed controlled SMES schemes
are conducted in two cases.
A. Case 1
The case 1 scenario is a microgrid unplanned disconnection,
followed by a wind turbine and off-grid in islanded operation
mode microgrid. The specific working condition is set as shown
in Fig. 4. At t = 0 s, the microgrid starts operation; the SMES
energy reaches 1.5 MJ after charging and changes to standby
mode at t = 2.5 s; then, the microgrid operation mode switches
from grid-connected mode to islanded mode at t = 3 s, and the
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5403604
Fig. 5. Comparison of bus voltage and frequency with and without SMES
under case 1.
Fig. 6. SMES absorbed power and energy curves under case 2.
wind turbine disconnects from the microgrid due to a failure at
t = 4 s. At t = 5 s, the grid returns to grid-connected mode and
the SMES begins to charge for energy recovery.
The AC bus RMS voltage and frequency under the with and
without SMES schemes are illustrated in Fig. 5. Under the
without SMES scheme, the voltage of the microgrid could not
be stabilized at 0.38 kV, but became 0.41 kV with a deviation of
up to 8% during the mode switching at t = 3∼4 s; while with
SMES, the voltage amplitude finally stabilized at about 0.39 kV
after a 40 ms overshoot fluctuation, with a voltage deviation of
only 2.6%. In addition, at the wind turbine failure at t = 4 s, the
bus RMS voltage reduced to 0.34 kV without SMES, while with
SMES, the voltage is around 0.37 kV.
In terms of frequency stability, under without SMES scheme,
the frequency deviation of the microgrid bus voltage reached a
maximum of 3.7 Hz, which was higher than the maximum value
of the frequency for normal system operation. The frequency
deviation was significantly reduced with SMES, and the maxi-
mum deviation was only 0.7 Hz. Thus, the proposed scheme with
SMES can improve the voltage and frequency stability under this
extreme condition.
The curves of SMES absorbed power and energy under pro-
posed method are plotted in Fig. 6. During t = 0∼2.5 s, the
energy of SMES increases to 1.5 MJ and the absorb power is
about 0.8 MW. Then, the SMES is kept standby. At t = 3 s,
the SMES output 0.46 MW active power, the energy begins to
decrease. At t = 4 s, the output power of SMES further increased
to 0.76 MW, and the drop rate of SMES energy also increases.
 5403604
Fig. 7. The working condition timeline of case 2.
Fig. 8. Comparison of bus voltage and frequency with and without SMES
under case 2.
Finally, after the disconnecting of the microgrid at t = 5 s, the
control of SMES returns to energy control, and SMES energy
begins to recovery.
B. Case2
In case 2, the mode switching of microgrid is the same as
case 1, and during the islanded mode operation microgrid, the
high-power load switching in and out at t = 3.5 s and t = 4.5 s
respectively. The working condition timeline of case 2 is shown
in Fig. 7.
The comparison of AC bus RMS voltage and frequency are
shown in Fig. 8. During high-power load step change, the bus
voltage and frequency of microgrid with and without SMES are
compared under the same working conditions.
In Fig. 8, the bus voltage drops to about 0.36 kV without
SMES at t = 3.4∼4.5 s. After connecting SMES, the voltage
value is basically stable at about 0.38 kV during load step
change, except that there is a small overshoot and undershoot
at moment of switching in and out. In addition, the maximum
frequency deviation of microgrid bus voltage during t = 3.5∼5 s
is 1.3 Hz before connecting SMES; while with SMES, the
frequency deviation is significantly mitigated at the moment of
load switching, and the maximum deviation is only ±0.3 Hz.
Fig. 9 shows the curves of SMES energy and output power
in case 2 scenario. When the microgrid switches from grid-
connected mode to islanded mode at t = 3 s, SMES starts to
discharge. Until t = 3.5 s, the load step-up event is triggered
due to the switching in of high-power load, the SMES output
power suddenly increases from 0.5 MW to about 0.7 MW, and
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON APPLIED SUPERCONDUCTIVITY, VOL. 31, NO. 8, NOVEMBER 2021
Fig. 9. SMES absorbed power and energy curve under case 2.
the decreasing slope of the SMES energy curve increases. After
the load removal at t = 4.5 s, the SMES returns to the original
power output level.
V. CONCLUSION
This paper proposes an event-triggered based control method
of SMES for microgrid stability enhancement under extreme
conditions. The event-triggered control approach was proposed
to trigger the different control mode of SMES and requires lower
communication and computation. Two cases of extreme working
conditions of microgrid show that, compared to without SMES
method, the proposed scheme can improve the frequency and
voltage stability with less settling time. Moreover, the proposed
scheme is also suitable for other renewable distributed gener-
ation failure and has strong robustness against delay and data
packet loss in the case of abnormal communication.
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