An AC Microgrid Testbed for Power Electronics Courses in the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez

During the last decade, the use of renewable energy sources is dramatically increasing around the world. However, countries like the Puerto Rico depend in their majority on energy sources like petroleum or natural gas. To encourage the implementation of distributed generation systems using renewable energy sources, the Sustainability Energy Center (SEC) in the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez (UPRM) developed an AC Microgrid Testbed that will allow students and community to have a deeper understanding about the use of this type of technologies. In this work, the design and implementation of this AC Microgrid Testbed is presented. Experimental results of Voltage Proportional-Resonant Control for AC inverters are presented as well. Results from this development show adequate performance of the testbed and demonstrate its modularity of being used with different types of energy sources, filters, and topologies.