Distributed control and optimization strategies are a promising alternative approach to centralized control within microgrids. In this paper, a multi-agent system is developed to deal with the distributed secondary control of islanded microgrids. Two main challenges are identified in the coordination of a microgrid: (i) interoperability among equipment from different vendors; and (ii) online re-configuration of the network in the case of alteration of topology. To cope with these challenges, the agents are designed to communicate with physical devices via the industrial standard IEC 61850 and incorporate a plug and play feature. This allows interoperability within a microgrid at agent layer as well as allows for online re-configuration upon topology alteration. A test case of distributed frequency control of islanded microgrid with various scenarios was conducted to validate the operation of proposed approach under controller and power hardware-in-the-loop environment, comprising prototypical hardware agent systems and realistic communications network.

The standard method for controlling an IGBT inverter (or any VSC inverter for that matter) is by vector current control. This control system consists of two cascaded control loops. One possible realisation of the outer controller is to control the DC bus voltage such that no more power is taken off the DC bus than is available. This creates a current reference, which is fed into the inner current controller. The inner current controller then regulates the current passing through the IGBT such that the desired power is dispatched onto the grid. Whilst most research treats the grid connection as a simple RL circuit, there is little consistency on the method by which the gains of the inner current controller are selected. Internal model control, modulus optimum and root locus methods are just a few of the methods used to find the gains. However, it is not clear which of these methods yields the best performance of the inner current controller. This work suggests that tuning on phase margin or manually tuning may not achieve the best results.

Distributed control and optimization strategies in power systems are gaining more and more attention, especially with the increasing penetration and integration of distributed generation. These novel distributed control and optimization algorithms need to be rigorously validated before their widescale deployment and acceptance. In this paper, a testing rig comprising real-time simulation with control and power hardware in the loop capability, with a multi-agent system platform and realistic communications emulation is utilized for the systems level validation of a distributed frequency control algorithm. The distributed frequency control is implemented within an islanded microgrid and its performance under two disturbances is assessed under real-world conditions. Index Terms-distributed control, multi-agent system, realtime simulation, power hardware in the loop, frequency control.