Employment of programmable controllers, control systems and service oriented architecture for the integration of distributed generators in the grid

Grid interface units, namely inverters, can be used to function as primary controllers for distributed energy resources (DERs). To decrease the costs of the DERs integration in Smart Grids, two new functionalities added to the inverter are proposed in this paper. The first is the metering to count for the injected power into the grid and hence the inverter shares in business-related functions, which mandates the interoperability with other business functions via service oriented architecture (SOA). The second is the intelligent electronic device (IED) enabled with IEC 61850 information objects and mapped to the data objects of IEEE P1815 for secondary control functionality. This needs an investigation in the available control systems, such as SCADA, decentralized, two-level and three-level control systems, in addition to the available programmable controllers. Therefore, a general communication strategy that comprises these functionalities and insures interoperability is proposed.