Impact Of Renewable Energy Micro-Power Plants On Power Grids Over Africa

Providing electricity in African countries through the extension of the grid is very expensive, due to its highly distributed population. Thereby, the use of distributed renewable energy micro-power plants is the proposed solution. In this paper, we present the research studies at our laboratory to achieve building prototypes of smart distributed renewable energy micro-power plants. Four types of micro-power plants are being developed; a 1.5 kW Wind Turbine Emulator based on a Double Fed Induction Generator, a 1.5 kW Wind Turbine Emulator based on a Synchronous Generator, a 1.5 kW Photovoltaic system with Grid Tie Inverters and finally, a 250 W Photovoltaic micro-power plant connected through a self-made single-phase Grid Tie Inverter. In addition, we have a simulated power grid with conventional power plants, power system stabilizers and automatic voltage controllers and other modelled power plants running in real time on embedded processors (Raspberry PI3). To ensure the data flow between all these micro-power plants and the simulated power grid, we use a Firebase Database; the experimental benches send data and receive orders to/from the database thanks to Wi-Fi connected microcontrollers ESP8266. Load Flow and Transient Stability studies are considered. (c) 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.