Hybrid Micro Grid Systems - Drivers & Challenges

Increasing environmental concerns, consumer expectations in terms of reliability & better quality of power supply and improving economics of distributed energy resources (DER) based on renewable, is making Micro Grid a viable proposition. Hybrid Micro grid utilising diversity of various energy resources including Wind, Solar, Biomass, and Energy Storage Batteries is found to be a better solution than single source Micro grid system. However, integration of multiple resources poses many issues & challenges. Moreover, present distribution system offers many technical & operational glitches for successful integration of Micro Grid Technologies. Paper addresses such challenges, issues and solutions. The Micro Grid resources optimization is generally being done based on self-sufficiency criterion which utilizes the grid support only in the event of contingencies like fault, generation disruptions (DER) etc. Paper also discusses various resources optimization techniques to serve the net load requirements in all time of the Day (TOD). Keywords: Distributed Energy, Black Start, net load, Islanding, MGCC, PSO, Genetic Algorith