Site-Specific Evaluation of Microgrid Controller Using Controller and Power-Hardware-in-the-Loop

Microgrid assets are built by utilities to improve the resilience and reliability of segments of the distribution system. Controllers with advanced capabilities will operate and control these microgrids with diverse energy technologies, which vary from inverter-based photovoltaics and energy storage systems to conventional diesel generators. There are multiple challenges to building a microgrid controller for a site because of the unique requirements presented by the controllable and uncontrollable elements in a specific microgrid. There are also challenges to testing the performance of the microgrid controller for such unique microgrids. This paper presents the controller and power-hardware-in-the-loop evaluation platform built to enable site-specific evaluation for a microgrid as well as the test cases used to evaluate the operation of a microgrid controller for a specific site. Finally, this paper presents the results from a subset of the experiments performed to evaluate the microgrid controller.