Robust power flow control in smart grids with fluctuating effects

One of the major issues encountered in smart grids is the unpredictable fluctuation of power supply from renewable energy sources. As an alternative to the energy storage technologies to mitigate these effects, in this paper a robust power flow control scheme is proposed that allows microgrids to function at desired working levels by cooperatively sharing energy with one another. An H_∞ design that can maintain the system robustness is considered from the worst-case perspective. The bounded real lemma is employed to transform the power flow control problem into an eigenvalue problem, which is convex and thus can be efficiently solved by existing algorithms. Simulations show that the microgrid energy states can achieve the desired working levels by using the proposed approach even if the fluctuation distributions are unknown. This study provides a power flow control framework in which more complicated systems and practical models of smart grids can be integrated.