Investigating the power quality improvement strategies for urban building microgrids

This paper investigates two power quality improvement strategies for microgrids designed for urban community environment such as, buildings in medium-to-large constructions like universities, greater residential communities, financial districts, industrial zones, etc. In developing countries, the rate of increase in the demand is more than the supply, which results in regular outages. There are number of motives to build integrated and synergistic microgrids to reduce burden on utility grid by using locally available energy sources to get environmental and economical benefits. These architectures yet need more research in providing quality and reliable supply to loads by having utility interaction as per IEEE 1547 guidelines. Also, energy management systems are strictly advised as per IEC-61970 to utilize the available resources optimally. With the above aspects, this paper describes two power quality improvement strategies; one is by the usage of DC Motor-Synchronous Generator (DCMSG) set, another one is by the usage of Diode Clamped Multi Level Inverter (DCMLI), in the process of DC to AC energy conversion before feeding to loads/utility grid. These two techniques are evaluated by calculating various power quality specifications. Various renewable energy sources such as Photovoltaics (PV), Wind Power (WP), and Fuel Cells (FC) are used to form microgrid. The results show that these strategies improve power quality and ensure reliable supply to building loads.