Use of Microgrids and DERs for black start and islanding operation

By Prof. Joao Peças Lopes, Porto University, Portugal.

Microgrids can be considered as the building block of a SmartGrid. These networks have several distributed energy resources (DER), ranging from controllable microgenerators to controllable loads, including storage devices. The microgrid requires local a communication infrastructure to allow the communication between a central control unit and DERs on the field. This control unit is responsible for managing the microgrid in grid interconnected mode, in islanding mode and to launch the sequence of actions that will lead to a local black start, which contributes to improve considerably the restoration time following a local or global black-out. This presentation will focus on the islanding operation modes and on the black-start sequences that can be adopted in a LV microgrid, as well as on the technical requirements that are needed to allow such operating approaches.

Biography:

João A. Peças Lopes is Full Professor at Porto University (FEUP) where he teaches in the graduation and post graduation areas. He is presently Associate Diretor of INESC TEC, one of the largest R&D interface institutions of the Uuversity of Porto. His main domains of research are related with large scale integration of renewable power sources, power system dynamics, microgeneration and microgrids, smartmetering and electric vehicle grid integration. He is author or co-author of more than 350 papers and co-editor and co-author of the book “Electric Vehicle Integration into Modern Power Networks” edited by Springer. He is Fellow from IEEE.