Design and Power Management of Low Voltage DC Nanogrid for Solar PV/Fuel Cell fed Residential Complexes

This paper presents power management of low voltage DC Nanogrid for isolated buildings. The DC Nanogrid consists of a solar panel, battery, fuel cell, and resistive load. The solar panel is connected to the DC Nanogrid with the help of a DC-DC boost converter, the battery uses DC-DC bi-directional converter to connect with the grid, the fuel cell is connected to the grid with a DC-DC boost converter, and resistive loads are connected to the grid with DC-DC buck converter. The maximum power point tracking (MPPT), propositional integral (PI), and sliding mode controllers (SMCs) are used to control these converters. The priority load concept is used in this work to increase the utilization of solar power and to reduce running costs. In this work, the central control strategy is used to obtain the power balance in DC Nanogrid. The central controller senses required data from DC Nanogrid and control the time of operation of different elements. The central controller processes the received data from the DC Nanogrid with the help of an algorithm and generates the control signals to the different elements. The performance of the central controller depends on the central controller algorithm. This paper also includes the event triggering (ET) control (aperiodic control) for communication because of its advantages over periodic control. The designed low voltage DC Nanogrid is examined under various operating conditions and results are presented.