Despite the increasing level of renewable power generation in power grids, fossil fuel power plants still have a significant role in producing carbon emissions. The integration of carbon capturing and storing systems to the conventional power plants can significantly reduce the spread of carbon emissions. In this article, the economic-emission dispatch of combined renewable and coal power plants equipped with carbon capture systems is addressed in a multiobjective optimization framework. The power system's flexibility is enhanced by hydropower plants, pumped hydro storage, and demand response program. The wind generation and load consumption uncertainties are modeled using stochastic programming. The dc power flow model is implemented on a modified IEEE 24-bus test system. Solving the problem resulted in an optimal Pareto frontier, while the fuzzy decision-making method found the best solution. The sensitivity of the objective functions concerning the generation-side is also investigated.

Filtration-based (FB) power/current allocation of battery-supercapacitor (SC) hybrid energy storage systems (HESSs) is the most common approach in DC microgrid (MG) applications. In this approach, a low-pass or a high-pass filter is utilized to decompose the input power/current of HESS into high-frequency and low-frequency components and then assign the high-frequency parts to SC. Moreover, to avoid the state of charge violation (SoC) of SC, this approach requires a rule-based supervisory controller which may result in the discontinuous operation of SC. This paper first provides a small-signal stability analysis to investigate the impact of an FB current allocation system on the dynamic stability of an islanded DC MG in which a grid-forming HESS supplies a constant power load (CPL). Then, it shows that the continuous operation of SC is essential if the grid-forming HESS is loaded by large CPLs. To address this issue, this paper proposes a model predictive control (MPC) strategy that works in tandem with a high-pass filter to perform the current assignment between the battery and SC. This approach automatically restores the SoC of SC after sudden load changes and limits its SoC variation in a predefined range, so that ensure the continuous operation of SC. As a result, the proposed FB-MPC method indirectly enables the MG’s proportional-integral (PI) voltage controller to operate with higher gain values leading to better transient response and voltage quality. The performance of the proposed approach is then validated by simulating the system in MATLAB/Simulink.

This paper proposes a finite-time event-triggered secondary frequency and voltage control for islanded AC microgrids (MGs) in a distributed fashion. The proposed control strategy can effectively perform frequency restoration and voltage regulations, while sharing the active and reactive power among the distributed generators (DGs) based on their power ratings. The finite-time control enables a system to reach consensus in a finite period of time enhanced from the asymptotic convergence. The event-triggered communication is utilized to reduce the communication burden among the DG controllers by transmitting data among DGs if an event-triggering condition is satisfied. The performance of the proposed finite-time event-triggered frequency control is verified utilizing a hardware-in-the-loop experimental testbed which simulates an AC MG in Opal-RT.

This paper presents a resilient control framework for distributed frequency and voltage control of AC microgrids under data manipulation attacks. In order for each distributed energy resource (DER) to detect any misbehavior on its neighboring DERs, an attack detection mechanism is first presented using a Kullback-Liebler (KL) divergence-based criterion. An attack mitigation technique is then proposed that utilizes the calculated KL divergence factors to determine trust values indicating the trustworthiness of the received information. Moreover, DERs continuously generate a self-belief factor and communicate it with their neighbors to inform them of the validity level of their own outgoing information. DERs incorporate their neighbors’ self-belief and their own trust values in their control protocols to slow down and mitigate attacks. It is shown that the proposed cyber-secure control effectively distinguishes data manipulation attacks from legitimate events. The performance of proposed secure frequency and voltage control techniques is verified through the simulation of microgrid tests system implemented on IEEE 34-bus test feeder with six DERs.

This article addresses the security of distributed secondary control of inverter-based distributed energy resources (DERs) in microgrids. The proposed cybersecure scheme utilizes the weighted mean subsequence reduced algorithm at each DER to discard the corrupted information received from neighboring DERs. This algorithm requires the connectivity of underlying communication graph to be above a specific threshold. To cope with this requirement, a methodology is proposed such that each DER is able to virtually change the quality of communication links connected to that DER to enhance the connectivity of communication graph. Two islanded microgrid test systems are simulated to validate the effectiveness of proposed cybersecure secondary control.

As a result of the increase in penetration of inverter-based generation such as wind and solar, the dynamics of the grid are being modified. These modifications may threaten the stability of the power system since the dynamics of these devices are completely different from those of rotating generators. Protection schemes need to evolve with the changes in the grid to successfully deliver their objectives of maintaining safe and reliable grid operations. This paper explores the theory of traveling waves and how they can be used to enable fast protection mechanisms. It surveys a list of signal processing methods to extract information on power system signals following a disturbance. The paper also presents a literature review of traveling wave-based protection methods at the transmission and distribution levels of the grid and for AC and DC configurations. The paper then discusses simulations tools to help design and implement protection schemes. A discussion of the anticipated evolution of protection mechanisms with the challenges facing the grid is also presented.