Control coordination in inverter-based microgrids using AoI-based 5G schedulers

A coordinated set point automatic adjustment with correction enabled (C-SPAACE) framework that uses 5G communication for real-time control coordination between inverter-based resources (IBR) in microgrids is proposed. Utilising slicing capability, 5G offers low-latency communication to C-SPAACE under normal conditions. However, given the multitude of power grid use cases, a certain 5G slice for C-SPAACE may have access only to limited radio spectrum resources, which if not managed well, greatly undermines the communication needs of C-SPAACE framework. Thus, optimally scheduling the available spectrum resources among IBRs in a sliced 5G network-based C-SPAACE framework becomes a critical problem. To address this issue, the authors utilise a novel age of information (AoI) metric and designs an AoI-based 5G scheduler to provide low-latency communication to C-SPAACE. Following this, a co-simulation environment is designed using PSCAD/EMTDC and Python to simulate a microgrid supported by 5G communication. Time-domain simulation case studies are performed using the proposed co-simulation environment to evaluate the performance of C-SPAACE using 5G with both AoI-based and other baseline (non-AoI) schedulers. A 5G-based coordinated set point automatic adjustment with correction enabled (C-SPAACE) for distributed control of microgrids is proposed. The proposed method uses the age of information to optimally allocate resource blocks to ensure the delivery of the quality of service required by C-SPAACE. Cosimulation results using PSCAD/EMTDC software and Python verify the validity of the proposed method.image