HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE PROJECTS

Our DERConnect outreach and intern team have developed a series of projects and lectures that teach students the hardware and software skills to enhance their understanding and practical knowledge in distributed energy resources, power grids, decentralized and centralized systems, and optimization. These modules are open source and provide students and educators a framework for building course curriculum, outreach workshops, and more.

Our hardware projects aim to provide an experiential learning environment for students to gain practical skills in circuit design and implementation of distributed energy resources for both centralized and decentralized systems. This work is led by engineering students, Tahseen Hussain and Nikita Valajev from UC San Diego and Tommy Truong from CSU Long Beach under the mentorship of Keaton Chia, Adil Khurram, Jan Kleissl, and Phuong Truong.

P0: Intro to Arduino

A quick introduction to how to utilize the Arduino microcontroller and building basic circuits.

P0 Documentation

P0 Slide Deck

P2: Micro vs. Main Grids

Introduces microgrids and integrates DERs to manage multiple power sources (PV panels, battery, main grid) and islanded mode.

P2 Documentation

P2 Slide Deck

P0: Intro to ESP32

A quick set up tutorial to ensure your Arduino environment is set up to be able to compile on ESP environments

P3: Intro to Decentralization

Introduces decentralized systems, critical vs non-critical loads, multi-DERs, multi-controllers.

P3 Documentation

P3 Slide Deck

P1: Solar Battery Charger

Introduces DERs, PVs, rechargeable batteries, ESP32, sensor data (voltage, current), centralized microgrid systems.

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P4: Intro to Optimization

Implement cost functions and evaluate decentralized system performance, perform optimization, minimize cost.

P4 Documentation

P4 Slide Deck

Our software project series aims to teach students to build their own microgrid systems in Simulink. Components of the system include BESS, photovoltaics, simulated wind turbine data. Advanced concepts such as grid forming, grid following, grid synchronization, and optimization are covered. To introduce these concepts to undergraduate demographics, we recommend Simulink training from Mathworks prior to the projects and lectures shown.

This work is led by engineering students, Belma Bajramovic and Anthony Sanchez from UC San Diego under the mentorship of Adil Khurram, Jan Kleissl, and Phuong Truong.

L1: Energy Management

Introduction to main grid vs microgrid, peak shaving, and concepts on grid forming and grid following

L1 Slide Deck

L4: Intro to DERs

An introduction to distributed energy resources: solar photovoltaic, battery energy storage systems, etc.

L4 Slide Deck

L2: Intro to MPPT

Introduction to Solar Photovoltaic, Maximum Power Point Tracking and Impedance Matching Algorithm.

L2 Slide Deck

L3: Intro to Simulink

Lecture introduces functions on simulink blocks: control room, solver block, impedance block, signal lines, etc.

L3 Slide Deck

Pre-Made Simulink Models

Design Remote Microgrid

Microgrid Design Author

Solar Power Inverter

Power Innovative Research Consultancy

Microgrid Hybrid Management System

Simulink Training from Mathworks

Simulink OnRamp

Simulink Fundamentals

Simscape OnRamp

MATLAB OnRamp

Optimization OnRamp

Control Design OnRamp

Power Systems OnRamp

OnRamp Training Suite (ALL)

Webinars and Info Media

Microgrid System Development

Intro to MPPT Algorithm

How does MPPT work?

What is Simscape?

Intro to Simscape Electrical

Microgrids with EV Charging

Islanded Operation of Remote Microgrid

Microgrid Design with Simscape

Microgrid System Development

Evaluating Microgrid Control

Our databank of distributed energy resource concepts is curated by our intern team and research assistant team to help new learners with advanced concepts in this field. It is a running list of concepts with resources we've curated to better understand how things work and what terms mean.

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DERConcepts

A databank of concepts and term curated by our intern and research team.

Slide Deck

DERConnect Quiz

Below is curated literature from our team to provide learners with background knowledge on distributed energy resources and a comprehensive review of how the operate within microgrids. This is helpful for new learners of the field and provides essential context for the concepts learned.

A Comprehensive Review on Microgrid and Virtual Power Plant Concepts Employed for Distributed Energy Resources Scheduling in Power Systems

Seyyed Mostafa Nosratabadi, Rahmat-Allah Hooshmand, Eskandar Gholipour

Link to Article

A Literature Review of the Control Challenges of Distributed Energy Resources Based on Microgrids (MGs): Past, Present and Future

Darioush Razmi and Tianguang Lu

Link to Article

Integrated Realtime Simulation of Voltage Regulation Algorithms in a Microgrid with DERs: Leveraging DERCONNECT Testbed

Sayed Abdullah Sadat, Benjamin Hwang, Kohei Murakami, Jan Kleissl , Jorge Cortes , and Adil Khurram

Link to Article

A Literature Review on Integration of Distributed Energy Resources in the Perspective of Control, Protection and Stability of Microgrid

Prasenjit Basak, S. Chowdhury, S. Halder nee Dey, S.P. Chowdhury

Link to Article

HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE PROJECTS

Pre-Made Simulink Models

Simulink Training from Mathworks

Webinars and Info Media

Media Resources

Project Ideas

General Resources

Hardware Resources