IEEE Electrification Magazine - March 2020 - 50

CANREL provides a
testbed for DERs
and MCSs to assess
innovations in EMS
technologies and
energy services.

must be understood and addressed
to ensure adequate system performance (Nasr-Azadani et al. 2014,
Nasr et al. 2019, and Nasr-Azadani
et al. 2012).
Presently, there are several demonstration and pilot projects at--
tempting to integrate renewable
energy resources into i s l a n d e d
microgrid systems as discussed in
Arriaga et al. 2013, where the integration of renewable energy resources
in Canadian remote community microgrids are des--
cribed. For example, communities in Northern Ontario,
such as Deer Lake and Fort Severn, have ongoing projects
to deploy photovoltaic (PV) and hybrid systems to reduce
diesel fuel consumption. Also, the remote mine at Diavik,
in the Northwest Territories, has installed a wind farm to
reduce fuel consumption, and the Northwest Territories
Power Corporation has installed a solar/battery system in
Coville Lake (Arriaga et al. 2017).
For utilities operating islanded microgrids, such as
microgrids in remote communities, grid stability and system performance are two main challenges when in--
creasing renewable energy penetration. On the other
hand, grid-tied communities face different challenges
related to improving the resiliency of critical infrastructure. Moreover, since microgrids are a relatively new concept for utilities, engineers, and end users, operating
challenges are not well understood. Thus, microgrid demonstration projects and testbed facilities with high penetration of renewables allow utilities to study and address
the challenges before large-scale deployments.
During the last decade, several microgrid testbed
facilities have been developed in different countries,
focusing on operation of various distributed energy
resources (DERs) to allow microgrid research and development for actual microgrid deployments. For example,
in North America, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory has developed various simulators i.e., a grid simulator, a PV simulator, and a hardware-in-the loop testbed
concentrating on the characteristics of DERs. The Consortium for Electric Reliability Technology Solutions has
a microgrid demonstration testbed with three feeders
and loads to demonstrate the integration of three microturbines into a microgrid (Lasseter et al. 2011); this
testbed does not include emulators or an energy management system (EMS), it examines transitions between
grid-connected and off-grid modes and decentralized
control. The Alaska Center for Energy and Power has
developed a microgrid testbed that includes various
components, such as a wind turbine emulator based on
an induction generator, a battery energy storage system
(BESS) a dc power supply, and a diesel generator, focusing on off-grid applications. The Idaho National Laboratory (INL) has a 300-kW microgrid testbed that includes

I E E E E l e c t r i f i cati o n M agaz ine / MARCH 2020

solar panels, ESSs, load banks, smart
inverters, a power distribution system, a small-scale grid simulator,
and multiple switchgear sets; the INL
testbed is used mainly to investigate
military applications, simulating the
integration of renewable energy
resources in microgrids (Hossain et al.
2014 and INL 2018). The DeMoTec
microgrid, a 200-kW facility in Germany, focuses on electrification with
renewable energy resources. It has a
distribution line simulator to investigate the basic issues
of DERs in interconnected grids (Barnes et al. 2005). Most
of these microgrid demonstration projects look at potential benefits of renewable energy resources and the integration of DERs and are not in general sufficiently
flexible to test and assess various control and protection
strategies; however, some allow microgrid control and
protection testing.
There are also several small-scale microgrid labs in various research institutes and universities around the world
(Hossain et al. 2014, Barnes et al. 2005, Turner et al. 2015,
Cagnano et al. 2017, Wang et al. 2016, Meiqin et al. 2008,
and Zhao et al. 2012). For example, the University of Texas
at Arlington has developed small-scale testbeds comprising three independent microgrids with 24-V dc and 120-V
ac buses. Each testbed contains lead-acid batteries, solar
systems, wind turbines, and a fuel cell connected to the dc
buses and dc/ac inverters, a programmable load, and a
diesel generator connected to the ac bus. A National
Instrument controller controls the testbeds for research
purposes (Turner et al. 2015).
There is also the Association of European Distributed Energy Resources Laboratories (DERlab), which is a
cluster of DER laboratories that provide services for
testing and validations of DERs (DERlab 2018). Most of
the facilities of DERlab's members are equipped with
ESSs, PV systems, and wind turbines for research and
development services (Hossain et al. 2014, Barnes et al.
2005, Pereira et al. 2015, and Petrollese et al. 2016). A
flexible and reconfigurable microgrid testbed in China
is presented in Wang et al. 2016. This testbed provides
various configurations with DERs for grid-connected
applications. There is also a microgrid testbed de--
veloped at the Hefei University of Technology that
includes various DERs (Meiqin et al. 2008). Furthermore,
an integrated microgrid testbed has been constructed
in Zhejiang Electric Power Test and Research Institute.
The testbed comprises a diesel generator, a flywheel,
fault simulators, and PV and battery systems (Zhao et
al. 2012). Research at the Zhejiang Electric Power Test
and Research Institute focuses on microgrid control
strategies. Some experimental results for the testbed are presented in Zhao et al. 2012. Most of these
microgrid testbeds are small-scale facilities, focusing

IEEE Electrification Magazine - March 2020

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