PhD student Eric Silk with Advisor A. D. Domínguez-García.

The goal of this project is to develop and demonstrate a software framework for the control of microgrids by using distributed algorithms. My contributions thus far have largely involved applying modern software practices to convert existing code to a platform-agnostic implementation, i.e., one that run on any hardware with sufficient processing power, with minimal effort. Current hardware targets include embedded microprocessors (such as the Arduino Due/Atmel SAM3X8E ARM Cortex-M3), hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) power system simulators (Typhoon HIL), and traditional computing environments (i.e., desktops). This is intended to allow for researchers to rapidly develop and simulate new distributed control algorithms in a traditional fashion, and then immediately run their implementation in HIL simulations or on actual control devices. This will speed development and provide greater assurances for the implementation’s robustness. This research is supported by the U.S. Department of Defense.

Figure 1: An example of target hardware – both microcontrollers and HIL simulators