Load management in intermittent and weak grid communities

摘要

Growing population, globalization and an increased focus on industrialization by all countries has caused an explosive rise in the global energy demand. Electric energy has emerged as the most important form of energy over the years. In the developing world, there is acute shortage of electricity and countries have to rely on forced load-shedding in order to manage high demand during peak hours. In order to cope with load-shedding many industrial units and agricultural farms have relied on alternate sources of power generation. These include captive fuel generators, solar Photo-Voltaic (PV) modules, Biogas generators, Wind turbines etc. However, now the domestic electricity consumers in both rural and urban communities have also started to look at alternate energy resources both because of an increased spending power of an enhanced middle class and proliferation of more robust and affordable solutions. This paper proposes a load management system that can drive a variety of household loads as needed, while optimizing the use of available resources in an optimal manner. This system provides an efficient and robust way to control the critical and non-critical loads in a household. The presented system can be integrated with a Distributed Generation (DG) system to provide power flow control that is integrated with an elastic load to ensure optimal utilization of renewable generation resources. The use of PLC based control allows the users to observe various system parameters on a web based application and an integrated Human Machine Interface.