A Neural Network-Based Energy Management System for PV-Battery Based Microgrids

A neural network-based energy management system (NN-EMS) has been proposed in this paper for islanded ac microgrids fed by multiple PV-battery based distributed generators (DG). The stochastic and unequal irradiation results in unequal PV output, which causes an unequal state-of-charge (SoC) among the batteries of the DGs. This effect may cause the difference in the SoCs to increase considerably over time, leading to some batteries reaching their SoC limits. These batteries would no longer be able to control the dc-link of the hybrid grid forming DG. The proposed NN-EMS ensures SoC balancing by learning an optimal state-action mapping using the outputs of an optimal power flow (OPF). The training dataset has been generated by executing a mixed-integer linear programming based OPF for droop-based island microgrids considering a practical generation-load profile. The resultant NN-EMS controller inherits the information of optimal states and the network behaviour. Compared to traditional time-ahead centralized methods, the proposed strategy does not require accurate generation-load forecasting. Further, it can also respond to the variations in the PV power in near-real-time without resorting to solving an OPF. The proposed NN-EMS controller has been validated by case studies on a CIGRE LV microgrid containing PV-battery hybrid DGs. The proposed concept can also be extended to synthesize decentralized controllers that can cooperate among themselves to achieve a global objective without communication.