Load Shedding in Microgrids with Consideration of Voltage Quality Improvement

Microgrids have become more and more popular their usefulness as a renewable energy resource has been recognized. The core ability and promise of microgrids is addressing the environmental concerns due to climate change that have been growing during recent years. The innovation of microgrids is that they are designed to operate either in island mode or interconnected with the main grid system. However, when the microgrid operates in islanded mode, faults may occur which can cause system collapse or even blackout. Load curtailment schemes can be utilized to decrease the quantity of associated load to a level that can be securely supported by accessible generation in isolated mode. The main goal of this research is to evaluate the optimal amount of shedding power considering sustainable power sources, with the help of primary and secondary adjustments of the generator to restore the frequency to the allowed range. Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm is applied in this paper to determine the distributed shedding power on each demand load bus which can improve the voltage quality of the isolated microgrid system. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated through the simulation of IEEE 16- bus microgrid.