Integration of vanadium redox battery for virtual inertia supported Load frequency control of islanded microgrid system

The rapid adoption of renewable energy sources (RESs) in microgrids (MGs) has brought significant benefits in terms of sustainability and environmental impact. However, the integration of RES-powered MGs poses challenges to system stability, primarily due to the need for inherent inertia provided by traditional synchronous generators. Incorporating energy storage systems (ESSs) and effective inertial control techniques becomes crucial to overcome this issue. This paper proposes a novel virtual inertia control (VIC) strategy-based model utilizing vanadium redox batteries (VRBs) for frequency regulation in islanded microgrids. The proposed VIC strategy employs a fractional-order proportional integral derivative (FOPID) controller with its gain parameters optimized using the African vultures optimization algorithm (AVOA). To evaluate the effectiveness of AVOA, compared with the WOA and PSO algorithms. The robustness of the suggested controller is extensively verified through simulations, considering various scenarios such as step and random load perturbations and the uncertain nature of RES sources like solar photovoltaic and wind power systems. The performance of the proposed controller is compared with the traditional PI and PID controller to demonstrate its superior effectiveness in ensuring grid stability and frequency regulation.