Power optimal capacitor charging to illustrate a method for identifying microgrid renewable source characteristics

Developing requirements for renewable power sources that are able to meet specified load needs is the motivation for this work. The approach used here is to formulate energy storage as an optimal control problem. Alternative objective functions are applied to a tutorial LC circuit yielding insight into the relationship between the supply characteristics and the rate of storage. Given a specified storage target and time, several objective functions are considered. These are used to form a spectrum of voltage source time histories that minimize the objective functions while achieving the storage target, Although the system being considered is linear, the complexity of the solutions arises due to the nonlinearily of the objective functions employed. The resulting source characteristics provide insight into desirable renewable source characteristics, More importantly, this work describes a methodology for addressing more complex renewable integration designs using an optimal control approach.