Voltage based droop control in an islanded microgrid with wind turbines and battery storage

With increasing levels of distributed generation (DG) units in the power system, smart control systems have to be developed to obtain a reliable operation of the system. It is likely that this ´smart grid´ will emerge from several small smart grids called microgrids. These microgrids are able to provide a coordinated integration of DG units in the electric power system. Integrating wind turbines as microsources in islanded microgrids could be a first step towards achieving this goal. In this paper, a small wind turbine and storage device are equipped with the voltage based droop control (VBD) strategy to investigate their ability to obtain a stable microgrid operation. It was shown in an experimental setup that the wind turbine has the ability to maintain the power balance and control the voltage in the microgrid. The addition of a storage device leads to better results as the energy yield losses can be lowered by storing the excess energy in the batteries or providing energy when needed.