Event-triggered variable horizon supervisory predictive control of hybrid power plants

Jean Yves Dieulot (1) , Frederic Colas (2) , Lamine Chalal (1) , Genevieve Dauphin Tanguy (1)

1 CRIStAL - Centre de Recherche en Informatique, Signal et Automatique de Lille - UMR 9189
2 L2EP - Laboratoire d’Électrotechnique et d’Électronique de Puissance - ULR 2697

The supervision of a hybrid power plant, including solar panels, a gas microturbine and a storage unit operating under varying solar power profiles is considered. The Economic Supervisory Predictive controller assigns the power references to the controlled subsystems of the hybrid cell using a financial criterion. A prediction of the renewable sources power is embedded into the supervisor. Results deteriorate when the solar power is unsteady, owing to the inaccuracy of the predictions for a long-range horizon of 10 s.The receding horizon is switched between an upper and a lower value according to the amplitude of the solar power trend. Theoretical results show the relevance of horizon switching, according to a tradeoff between performance and prediction accuracy. Experimental results, obtained in a Hardware In the Loop (HIL) framework, show the relevance of the variable horizon approach. Power amplifiers allow to simulate virtual components, such as a gas microturbine, and to blend their powers with that of real devices (storage unit, real solar panels). In this case, fuel savings, reaching 15 %, obtained under unsteady operating conditions lead to a better overall performance of the hybrid cell. The overall savings obtained in the experiments amount to 12 %.

Mots clés: Renewable hybrid system; Economic model predictive control; Power system control

Domaines: Automatique / Robotique; Energie électrique

Jean Yves Dieulot, Frederic Colas, Lamine Chalal, Genevieve Dauphin Tanguy. Event-triggered variable horizon supervisory predictive control of hybrid power plants. Control Engineering Practice, 2014, 34, pp.61-67. ⟨10.1016/j.conengprac.2014.10.003⟩. ⟨hal-01890425⟩