The Provision of Frequency Control Reserves From Multiple Microgrids

The concept of microgrid is invented to harmonize local electricity production and consumption. The increasing interest on microgrids is caused by the considerable growth of renewable energy sources (RES) and distributed generation (DG). In a large geographical region, there can exist multiple microgrids. Many academic articles have reported the technicalities of microgrids operating in islanded mode, and few have analyzed their aggregated technical/economic impacts or benefits on the network in a larger region. Deregulation encourages RES to participate in energy markets to facilitate competition among different energy providers. Apart from participating in energy markets, an alternative way of making use of and making profit out of multiple microgrids is to take part in the ancillary-service market. This paper investigates the technical aspects of providing frequency control reserves (FCRs) and the potential economic profitability of participating in FCR markets based on a setup of multiple microgrids. In particular, it has a focus on the communication aspects under different market scenarios, i.e., decentralized or centralized coordination approach, for FCRs with the assumption of the possible aggregation of reserve provision from multiple microgrids (microsources and flexible loads).