Online condition monitoring and power management system for standalone micro-grid using FPGAs

The integration of multiple renewable energy resources to meet the energy needs of the consumers in remote locations with better reliability is a major challenge due to inherent characteristics of available renewable sources namely unpredictability and variability. This requires development of effective micro-grid controllers to manage power balance between load and generation. In this study, a micro-grid controller integrating the output from multiple types of renewable energy conversion systems, namely, wind and solar along with diesel generator as well as battery storage has been developed with source and load control features using field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). The load controller facilitates load management (switching ON/OFF non-critical loads) based on the generation availability and energy storage capacity. The source controller facilitates source management based on the load requirement and battery status. The various parameters of these different power generation sources and loads are displayed on visual screen using FPGA for online condition monitoring of the micro-grid. It also includes the communication between source and load controllers using Ethernet for exchange of monitored data for a suitable control action. This innovative work has been developed in such a manner that it will be replicable in the field to bring it on the large scale.