| Abstract |
Following the United Nation Sustainable Development Goals of ensuring universal access to basic andmodern electric services by 2030, a strong research interest has emerged in the power grid community to design microgrids adapted for rural electrification of Sub-Saharan countries. Their optimal topology, their stability as well as their control architecture are still open to debate. However, DC microgrids with decentralized storage and production are increasingly gaining attention as they enable the progressive building of electric infrastructure in a bottom-up manner, which increases the economic viability, the modularity and the scalability of such rural electrification scheme. In addition, there is a growing consensus in terms of control for decentralized and communication-free algorithms. The absence of a centralized controller is crucial to avoid a single point of failure and to enable plug & play feature within the microgrid. Moreover, DC microgrids must be robust and affordably deployable even in areas with limited or no telecommunication signals. Therefore, this paper proposes the design through software simulations of a decentralized and communication-free control algorithm of DC microgrids adapted for the rural electrification of Africa. The proposed control is then thoroughly validated on a lab test bench and extensive results are presented. |
