Date Available

11-22-2016

Year of Publication

2016

Degree Name

Master of Science in Electrical Engineering (MSEE)

Document Type

Master's Thesis

College

Engineering

Department/School/Program

Electrical and Computer Engineering

First Advisor

Dr. Aaron Cramer

Abstract

A growing energy crisis, a rapid climate change, and a constant depletion of fossil fuel necessitates the role of renewable energy resources like PV (Photovoltaics) and wind energy to form a group of distributed sources of generation. These circumstances promote the use of renewable resources meeting the environmental commitments in terms of checking pollution and toxic footprints. A group of PV and wind energy generation units may work together as micro players to form smart grid systems and participate in an existing distribution system to meet a portion of the daily energy demand. This will help in minimizing the network losses during transmission and in improving energy efficiency of the overall distribution system. However, owing to the inherent characteristics of power variability of these renewable energy sources which results in voltage variability in the distribution system, there is a need to design a distribution system that minimizes voltage spikes. This thesis examines a potential market-based approach to the control of PV Inverters in a distribution system to stabilize fluctuations in voltage. An algorithm that closely imitates the behavior of an economic system is applied to the system to manage voltage variability. More traditional approaches of mitigating voltage variability are studied and compared to understand the feasibility of the market-based control approach method on this distribution system.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.13023/ETD.2016.438

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