An Economic Feasibility Study of an Automatic Centralised Micro-Grid Controller based hybrid AC/LVDC Microgrid

The unprecedented increase in the use of renewable sources in the recent times has led to the development of newer technologies in power systems. Most of these renewable sources are DC in nature as opposed to traditional AC systems. Coupled with a huge use of DC based equipment in households, it is imperative that the present system be modified to have an optimal and efficient operation. A solution needs to be developed to address this challenging shift from AC to a hybrid system with majority DC. Combining the advantages of AC and LVDC(Low Voltage DC) system a novel hybrid AC/LVDC system with an intelligent centralized micro-grid controller is also discussed previously which aims at giving a feasible solution. The feasibility of any engineering solution is multidimensional and the economics of such is a vital deciding and driving factor for it to be practically implemented and widely accepted. This paper specifically aims to deal with the economic aspects of such a design. It details the analysis of the cost of the new design and compares with the existing traditional system. The paper also deals with the analysis of operational costs in a customer as well as utility perspective to give a lucid picture on the effectiveness of the proposed system.