Development, sizing and testing of containerized microgrid solution

• Main Author: Gaurav Mani Gupta
• Other Authors: Ali Iftekhar Maswood
• Format: Thesis-Master by Research
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2023
• Subjects: Engineering::Electrical and electronic engineering::Electric power::Auxiliaries, applications and electric industries
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/169114
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The electricity demand is growing incredibly fast due to continued modernization. However, a significant part of the society i.e., off-grid communities still have limited or no access to electricity due to logistical, financial and infrastructure issues. Such communities exist all over the world but are more prominent in Asia, the Middle east, South America, Africa. Typically, off-grid communities have an abundance of at least one renewable energy source and considering technological advancements, microgrids can be treated as a viable energy solution for these off-grid communities. However, for such communities, a large commercial microgrid is not a good solution, as these large-scale microgrids require huge space and substantial CAPEX and OPEX, however a miniaturized microgrid in a container i.e., a containerized microgrid (CMG) is a potential solution to these challenges which is essentially a modular power generation system. To achieve this objective, Rolls-Royce@NTU Corp. Lab (EPSIL@N) is developing a simple modular CMG for off-grid communities for basic access to electricity. Several players have come forward in recent years to develop a CMG type solution focusing on cost-effective renewable utilization, and quick deployment under various conditions with sustainability, resiliency, and reliability. Though the existing CMG solutions are tailored in a way to achieve the certain objective for a specific region and community, there exist some key challenges which are yet to be addressed in these solutions so that the system can be used as an efficient generic power generation solution for a wider segment of these off-grid communities globally. The challenges are higher renewable penetration with lower battery cycles, the use of a lean power conversion architecture, system safety, and immunity to power line disturbance. While the development of CMG solutions is a large project, and the research work in this MEng thesis is a specific contribution towards this effort. This thesis focuses on developing and controlling power conversion system architecture for a 50kW CMG. Key contributions to this MEng project will be sizing of key components, power conversion system topology selection, control of power converters, development, and testing of MPPT algorithm for CMG systems, modelling, and testing of model predictive control for a CMG system. The system is designed for 50 kW Solar PV, 150 kWh Lithium-ion Battery, 50 kW integrated power conversion system, and 33 kWdiesel Genset for backup power. The proposed CMG system is initially verified in MATLAB Simulink and then on hardware prototype of 50 kW test setup at EPSIL@N.