Investigation of Microgrids With Both Inverter Interfaced and Direct AC-Connected Distributed Energy Resources

With the increasing use of renewable energy resources and energy storage devices, inverter-based distributed energy resources (DERs) become the important components in microgrids. As diesel generators with direct ac connections are the current most cost effective and reliable power sources, the stability investigation of microgrids should include both types of DERs. In this paper, dynamics of diesel generation will be included and the interaction of the diesel generators and the inverter-based DERs will be investigated using eigenvalue analysis and time-domain simulations. The significant contributions of this paper include: 1) identification of the stability problem in microgrids with inverter-based DERs and conventional generators and 2) investigation of the interaction problem of inverter-based DERs and conventional generators in islanded microgrids.