A wind power short-term forecasting method based on discrete wavelet transform and long short-term memory networks (DWT_LSTM) is proposed. The LSTM network is designed to effectively exhibit the dynamic behavior of the wind power time series. The discrete wavelet transform is introduced to decompose the non-stationary wind power time series into several components which have more stationarity and are easier to predict. Each component is dug by an independent LSTM. The forecasting results of the wind power are obtained by synthesizing the prediction values of all components. The prediction accuracy has been improved by the proposed method, which is validated by the MAE (mean absolute error), MAPE (mean absolute percentage error), and RMSE (root mean square error) of experimental results of three wind farms as the benchmarks. Wind power forecasting based on the proposed method provides an alternative way to improve the security and stability of the electric power network with the high penetration of wind power.

The DC microgrid has become a new trend for microgrid study with the advantages of high reliability, simple control and low losses. With regard to the drawbacks of the traditional droop control strategies, an improved DC droop control strategy based on integrator current-sharing is introduced. In the strategy, the principle of eliminating deviation through an integrator is used, constructing the current-sharing term in order to make the power-sharing between different distributed generation (DG) units uniform and reasonable, which can reduce the circulating current between DG units. Furthermore, at the system coordinated control level, a hierarchical/droop control strategy based on the DC bus voltage is proposed. In the strategy, the operation modes of the AC main network and micro-sources are determined through detecting the DC voltage variation, which can ensure the power balance of the DC microgrid under different operating conditions. Meanwhile, communication is not needed between different DG units, while each DG unit needs to sample the DC bus voltage, which retains the plug-and-play feature of the DC microgrid. The proposed control strategy is validated by simulation on a DC microgrid with permanent magnet synchronous generator-based wind turbines, solar arrays and energy storage batteries, which can be applied to small commercial or residential buildings.

Variable speed wind turbines (VSWTs) usually adopt a maximum power point tracking (MPPT) method to optimize energy capture performance. Nevertheless, obtained performance offered by different MPPT methods may be affected by the impact of wind turbine (WT)’s inertia and wind speed characteristics and it needs to be clarified. In this paper, the tip speed ratio (TSR) and optimal torque (OT) methods are investigated in terms of their performance under different wind speed characteristics on a 1.5 MW wind turbine model. To this end, the TSR control method based on an effective wind speed estimator and the OT control method are firstly presented. Then, their performance is investigated and compared through simulation test results under different wind speeds using Bladed software. Comparison results show that the TSR control method can capture slightly more wind energy at the cost of high component loads than the other one under all wind conditions. Furthermore, it is found that both control methods present similar trends of power reduction that is relevant to mean wind speed and turbulence intensity. From the obtained results, we demonstrate that, to further improve MPPT capability of large VSWTs, other advanced control methods using wind speed prediction information need to be addressed.

Considered as an important option to enhance power distribution capacity, improve operation flexibility and increase power quality in distribution grids, the medium-voltage DC (MVDC) technology has gained increasing interests in recent years. In this paper, the state of the art of researches and applications of MVDC distribution system is presented. Main topics and progresses are explored including planning and evaluation, main circuits, key equipment, control and protection. The most recent pilot projects around the world are introduced among which the Tangjia Bay pilot project with the largest capacity is illustrated in detail, together with the practical issues during the design, experiment, and commissioning.

The increasing penetration of renewable generators can be a significant challenge due to the fluctuation of their power generation. Energy storage (ES) units are one solution to improve power supply quality and guarantee system stability. In this paper, a hybrid microgrid is built based on photovoltaic (PV) generator and ES; and coordinated control is proposed and developed to achieve power management in a decentralized manner. This control scheme contains three different droop strategies according to characteristics of PV and ES. First, the modified droop control is proposed for PV, which can take full utilization of renewable energy and avoid regulating output active power frequently. Second, to maintain the direct current (DC) bus voltage stability, a novel droop control incorporating a constant power band is presented for DC-side ES. Third, a cascade droop control is designed for alternating current (AC)-side ES. Thus, the ES lifetime is prolonged. Moreover, interlinking converters (ICs) provide a bridge between AC/DC buses in a hybrid microgrid. The power control of IC is enabled when the AC- or DC-side suffer from active power demand shortage. In particular, if the AC microgrid does not satisfy the reactive power demand, IC then acts as a static synchronous compensator (STATCOM). The effectiveness of the proposed strategies is verified by simulations.