Analysis on central and distributed architectures of solar powered DC microgrids

In this work, central and distributed architectures of DC microgrids for rural electrification are analyzed under various operating conditions. In the proposed scheme, a single household consumer forms the atomic nanogrid unit which may integrate its resources in a scalable model with the community to form a microgrid, without dependence of the national grid. The flow of power between houses and the microgrid is implemented through a bidirectional flyback converter. The operation of proposed scheme for two different architectures, i.e. distributed generation distributed storage architecture (DGDSA) and centralized generation centralized storage architecture (CGCSA) is evaluated at various distribution voltage levels and conductor sizes. Modified Newton Raphson Method based analysis is performed for both architectures which show that distributed architecture has significant advantages over central architecture due to higher efficiency, low voltage drop and lower line losses. Further, the scalable nature with minimum installation cost for distributed architecture makes it more favorable for rural electrification applications in comparison to central architecture. The simulated results are also verified using a scaled down version of hardware implementation.