A cooperative control for the reserve management of isolated microgrids

Highlights: • A cooperative control for reserve management of isolated microgrids is developed. • The methodology is based on the sensitivity theory involving the Lyapunov theorem. • It is aimed at maximizing the overall spinning reserve of an isolated microgrid. • It is used in the real-time to alleviate the regulation burden of the master unit. • Test results demonstrated the controller's ability to be self-adaptive. The purpose of this paper is to examine how a coordinated control strategy for managing the active power reserve in isolated microgrids is presented. This methodology can be applied in those microgrids where a specified generator assumes the role of the isochronous generator for the overall system. The derived algorithm evaluates control actions in the on-line environment by solving a constrained dynamic optimization problem aimed at maximizing the overall spinning reserve and, in particular, the reserve offered by the master unit equipped with the isochronous governor controller. The solution of this problem is obtained by adopting the direct Lyapunov theorem applied to the Sensitivity theory, ensuring the algorithm's stability. Tests performed on the experimental microgrid, which has been built at the Polytechnic University of Bari, demonstrated the ability of the proposed methodology to share the regulation burden among all sources and storage systems, establishing adequate reserve margins of the master unit.