Centralized VSM control of an AC meshed microgrid for ancillary services provision

•A centralized control strategy for an AC meshed MG is presented.•The strategy facilitates the management of power systems including several MGs.•The MG can be operated as a Virtual Synchronous Machine (VSM).•An extended load flow model is used to identify the PQ production of each DG source. This paper proposes a centralized control strategy for distributed generation (DG) sources connected to an AC meshed microgrid (MG). Through the proposed strategy, power production of distributed generators is managed such that the injected active and reactive powers at the point of common coupling are equal to predefined set-points. Thus, the MG is able to provide the main ancillary services including frequency and voltage control. An extended load flow model is used to identify active and reactive power production of each DG unit such that the total power injected to the utility grid satisfies the required setpoints. Hence, from the point of view of the transmission system operator (TSO), the whole MG can be seen as a single entity that behaves as a «PQ» generator. This control is intended to facilitate the management of power systems including a large number of microgrids and DG sources in terms of stability analysis, optimal reactive power dispatch, optimal power flow, etc. Furthermore, since the centralized control allows to set «PQ» power production to any predefined value, it was proposed to operate the whole MG using the concept of Virtual Synchronous Machine (VSM). It has been shown that, through the proposed control, the MG can reproduce the behavior of conventional synchronous generators during normal conditions and during faults.