Building the Business Case for Decentralized Control Architectures for Microgrids

The microgrid market hinges on the successful performance of digital controllers that orchestrate distributed energy resources (DER) to achieve resiliency, maximize clean energy, and meet cost-saving goals. Several different control approaches are now available in the market. These range from top-down/command-and-control schemes—derived from methods used on the transmission system—to more decentralized approaches, which push intelligence out to the edge of the grid at the device level. Between these two extremes are other nuanced differences, such as hybrid control schemes, migrations to cloud computing, and even open source platforms.