Field-Validated Communication Systems for Smart Microgrid Energy Management in a Rural Microgrid Cluster

This paper demonstrates a smart energy management scheme for solar photovoltaic-biomass integrated grid-interactive microgrid cluster system. Three interconnected microgrids were chosen as a cluster of microgrids for validation of the proposed community energy management scheme. In this work, a Global System for Mobile (GSM)-based bidirectional communication technique was adopted for real-time coordination among the renewable energy sources and loads. To realize the common phenomenon of local grid outage in rural distribution networks, a practical case study is designed in this work. The optimized scheduling of the energy sources and loadsof different microgrids and the distribution grid were implemented to ensure zero loss of power supply probability (LPSP) for dynamic load profiles. The laboratory-scale prototype of the proposed microgrid clustering was first developed in this work by establishing real-time communication among multiple energy sources and loads through different energymeters located at different places inside the academic campus. The field validation was performed with a microgrid cluster consisting of 45 kWP solar photovoltaic, 50 kVA biogas plant, community loads in a village. The developed smart energy management solution is a generalized one and applicable to satisfy scalable community energy demands as well.