Harmonic Mitigation Methods in Microgrids

In the past decade, the term microgrid is used for the renewable energy-based systems. Smart microgrids have great potentials to produce electricity from the distributed energy resources like wind, solar, etc. However, there are some issues with the great penetration of smart microgrids in the power system such as system reliability, protection, harmonic mitigation concerns, connection to the main grid, and so on, which should be tackled with great care in such network. Therefore, this chapter aims to bring an overview on harmonics origins, harmonics’ standards, and harmonic mitigation methods used in smart microgrids. The harmonic standards from well-known organizations such as IEEE and IEC are introduced. The basic concepts of the harmonic mitigation methods proposed in the literature are explained and discussed. Moreover, a flowchart is proposed for applying harmonic mitigation methods in microgrids. The simulation results for two case studies are used to show the effectiveness of the proposed flowchart and proportional resonant and optimization-based controllers in the reduction of harmonic distortion.