Microgrid Research Laboratory

BEST - Bioenergy and Sustainable Technologies GmbH

Wieselburg | Website

Open for Collaboration

Short Description

Microgrids are small, local energy networks that independently supply energy to businesses, communities, and municipalities. These local and regional energy supply concepts can make a significant contribution toward energy independence and more efficient integration of renewable energies into the energy system.

The Microgrid Research Laboratory in Wieselburg connects technologies such as wood chip boilers, heat pumps and thermal storage with photovoltaic (PV) systems, battery storage, and charging stations for electric vehicles to form a cross-sector microgrid. The thermal and electric energy produced is delivered to the Technology and Research Center building (Technologie- und Forschungszentrum Wieselburg-Land) and to the nearby firefighting station. The research laboratory offers a comprehensive test environment for the development of intelligent systems that enable the better integration and utilization of renewable energies.

The Microgrid Research Laboratory is used to test High-level energy management systems developed by BEST. These systems calculate current and future energy demands and deliver energy to where it is needed or directly reduce the energy consumption. Therefore, high-level energy management systems optimize energy and cost flows, relieve strain on the grid, and reduce emissions. Test runs of an optimized, higher-level energy management system controller also took place at the Microgrid Research Laboratory. The optimization algorithms process data on energy demand (electricity, heating and cooling demand) and energy production (PV, wood chip boilers, etc.), as well as the current storage status of the thermal and electrical storage systems. The algorithms ensure that an optimum balance of cost savings, CO2 reduction, and grid serviceability is achieved. The research carried out at the laboratory is an important building block in the implementation of renewable energy communities. The findings are already being implemented in energy communities and municipalities in Lower Austria, as well as in Styria and Salzburg.

The Microgrid Research Laboratory is funded by the Office of the Lower Austrian State Government, Department of Economic Affairs, Tourism, and Technology. BEST – Bioenergy and Sustainable Technologies GmbH is the overall project manager.

Contact Person

Stefan Aigenbauer

Research Services

The Microgrid Research Laboratory, equipped with a higher-level microgrid controller, makes microgrid methodology and expertise accessible to service providers and developers of system components (e.g., data monitoring, energy management systems, EV charging controllers, etc.). Users have open access to the research laboratory, where they can conduct various test cycles using measured real-time load data, weather data, and forecast data. For example, test cycles could involve a basic microgrid scenario in which a photovoltaic (PV) system combined with a battery storage system is used as efficiently as possible for self-consumption, thereby reducing costs and CO2 emissions within the energy system.

Furthermore, various charging scenarios on weekends and discharging scenarios on weekdays can be implemented through a coordinated deployment plan of available energy technologies (such as PV and batteries). Electric vehicles (EVs) can also be included in the test cycles, using the predicted schedule for EV charging times. This enables the PV and battery storage system to be optimally utilized for charging EVs and avoiding peak loads. The defined objective functions of the control algorithms used (minimizing microgrid costs and/or CO2 emissions) would be applied in all test cycles and in real time.

Methods & Expertise for Research Infrastructure

The Microgrid Research Laboratory consists of a PV system, a battery storage system, charging stations for electric vehicles, a common interconnection point for grid connection and grid feed-in, biomass boilers, heat storage systems and compression refrigeration technologies. These are distributed across the site's two main buildings (Technologie- und Forschungszentrum Wieselburg-Land and firefighting station). Various measuring devices and sensors are used to collect real-time data from the microgrid lab's technologies. These require special protocols to communicate with the data acquisition system and thus form the backbone of the microgrid lab's real-time measurement system.

The data collected by the measuring devices and sensors is stored in a time series database based on a MySQL-MariaDB database. Furthermore, the time series database was connected to an HTML-based Grafana environment for visualizing the collected raw data and for further analysis. This data is used to monitor and analyse the interaction between the utility and the grid. Without this data, the microgrid controller could not operate in real time, or in the event of data outages, it would have to resort to a simple, rule-based energy management system, which prevents optimization goals (cost or CO2 minimization) from being pursued.

The Microgrid Research Laboratory in Wieselburg is Austria´s first laboratory that integrates renewable energy, utility power, heat technologies, biomass technologies, electromobility, storage technologies, building control and intelligent network communication, enabling the testing and evaluation of various control strategies and supervisory microgrid controller approaches. A Supervisory Microgrid Controller (a Model Predictive Control, MPC) based on Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) currently being tested in the Microgrid Lab is responsible for optimizing various distributed energy resources and their coordinated real-time operation within the system.

At each time step, the MPC controller calculates the control setpoints by solving a linear optimization problem for the forecast horizon. Then it applies the initial values of the calculated control sequences to the system. At the next time step, the controller acquires the updated states and measured values of the entire system, after which the optimization step is repeated. In the current development, time steps of 5 to 15-minutes are considered, and the forecast horizon is 24 hours (day-ahead optimization). The optimization problem has been modelled as mixed integer linear programming (MILP), with two different objective functions: one to minimize the system's total energy costs, and the other to minimize total CO2 emissions.

Further information and contact persons: https://www.best-research.eu/content/en/competence_areas/digital_methods_and_solutions/microgrids