Development of a Low-Cost Data Aggregation and Visualisation System for Microgrid Operational Awareness and Control
Creators: name: Biddle, Noah
Publisher: name: University of Wollongong
Year: 2025
Subjects: classificationCode: 400803
subject: Electrical energy generation (incl. renewables, excl. photovoltaics)
classificationCode: 400805
subject: Electrical energy transmission, networks and systems

description: The trend in microgrid research and installation has risen recently, most notably due to the incentive to decarbonise the energy industry. This can be attributed to a microgrid’s ability to embed local distributed energy resources (DER) while maintaining good power quality and stability for both the microgrid system and external grid. Although they offer enhanced energy resilience, the operation of a microgrid requires a complex level of control and infrastructure. It is therefore crucial that system insight is well established and that control has adequate communication infrastructure. Presently, most industry released packages are specialised and costly, raising the question whether microgrid data aggregation and control can be achieved through low-cost and prevalent methods.Ubiquitous data aggregation is an important aspect when operating a microgrid, for both control and supervisory functions. Interfacing with multiple devices is complicated and can involve costly infrastructure. This thesis presents the design, construction and commission of a low-cost, ubiquitous data aggregation, visualisation (LDAV) prototype and power management control system for a generic microgrid. It was designed to interface with an operating microgrid at the Sustainable Buildings Research Centre (SBRC) as a demonstration case. The LDAV system includes a power management system, designed to interface with an existing microgrid within the SBRC’s building, with design informed by existing literature. Visualisation dashboards prototypes are demonstrated and discussions with professionals critiquing their design are included.The functionality of the system has been assessed through in-field testing and simulation. To close the loop with the hardware developed, the LDAV system was utilized to apply control of power flows within the SBRC microgrid, with the main goals being the employment of a power balancing algorithm to maintain system stability during islanding. This was done using the developed communication channels and device interfaces established. Before implementing control, a comprehensive model of the microgrid was created using MATLAB Simulink. Through development and validation of the microgrid model, it was found that current functionality and hardware specifications of the LDAV system were insufficient in implementing the high-speed control functions of a generic microgrid. The main reason being the communication latency between the different devices in the system. However, the system has been able to control the lower speed nominal energy flows. This was further confirmed via practical testing at the SBRC.Although proven to have restricted control applications due to the communication speed, it was found that the LDAV was able to balance the energy of the SBRC to near net zero. A latency threshold was also determined for microgrid operation, which was found to be within the capabilities of most communication methods and could be applied to future work with the LDAV system designed for this thesis.