Coordinated ancillary services, market participation and communication of multi-microgrids: A review

Renewable microgrids provide a remarkable alternative to the general use of centralized generation sources, mostly supported by conventional fossil fuel resources. An advanced microgrid concept is networked micro-grids, or multi-microgrids, formed by a group of microgrids. They provide reliability, resilience and robustness to the grid, reducing operational costs. Nevertheless, problems related to variability and uncertainty of these renewables impose remarkable difficulties to control and operate multiple microgrids at distribution and transmission level. Different solutions have been proposed to overcome these drawbacks. Moreover, some contributions suggest coordinated control, architectures and energy management strategies to be applied at networked microgrids. This paper identifies and analyzes aggregated and/or coordinated renewable-based microgrids being able to provide ancillary services, market participation and communication. These characteristics increase grid flexibility and reliability, promoting the variable renewable energy integration. Recent issues, such as cyber-security and cyber-attacks in microgrid networked operation, are also reviewed as for possible research directions in the future.