Hero Energy & Engineering was selected by the Toronto Region and Conservation Authority (TRCA) to design and develop a testbed for distributed VoltVar management at their microgrid located at the Kortright Centre for Conservation. The microgrid regularly experiences overvoltage violation as a result of their renewable distributed generators (RDGs) that produce excess power generation.
Using Internet of Things (IoT) based communication protocols and a distributed, agent oriented approach, a control system was developed to guard against such overvoltage violations. Using existing microgrid infrastructure in the form of smart solar RDGs, battery banks, and flexible load, the control system was able to eliminate overvoltage violations and increase renewable energy production by 8%.
Check out the final project report at the LDC Tomorrow Fund page, which is the agency that funded the reseach work. Also, check out the YouTube links that demonstrate certain aspects of the solution!
Final Report
Project Overview
Utility Implementation
