A Review of the Control System Roles in Integrating Renewable Energy into the National Grid
Olugbenga E. Aluko, Moses Oluwafemi Onibonoje, Joseph O. Dada
Abstract
This paper presents the issues around the strategic importance of control systems in the integration of renewable energy sources (RESs) into the national grid to ensure a cost-effective transition to a lower-carbon energy system. Renewable energy (RE) grants a lot of potentials in energy generation because it is naturally replenished and clean. However, the fluctuating and uncontrollable nature of RESs presents issues of power quality and voltage fluctuations and others. Also, issues such as harmonic injection arise from the power electronic interfaces. Therefore, the integration of RE and management of the complex electrical system can be seamlessly achieved via a robustly designed control architecture to coordinate the distributed energy resources (DERs) in a microgrid approach. Conclusively, the study of the complex roles of the control systems in the integration process of RE to the traditional grid is a basis to expand the terrain of the research demands.