Maryam Saeedifard received the 2015 Technical Committee Working Group Recognition Award for her paper, “Trends in Microgrid Control,” from the IEEE Power System Dynamic Performance Committee. Saeedifard is an assistant professor in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE).

The paper, published in the IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid in 2014, was coauthored with Daniel E. Olivares, Claudio A. Cañizares, Mehrdad Kazerani, and Amir H. Hajimiragha (University of Waterloo); Ali Mehrizi-Sani (Washington State University); Amir H. Etemadi and Reza Iravani (University of Toronto); Oriol Gomis-Bellmunt, Rodrigo Palma-Behnke, and Guillermo A. Jiménez-Estévez  (University of Chile); and Nikos D. Hatziargyriou (National Technical University of Athens).

The microgrid concept is a quite appealing alternative for overcoming the challenges of integrating distributed energy resource (DER) units, including renewable energy sources, into power systems. However, in order to allow seamless deployment of microgrids, several issues still remain unsolved.

Currently, effort is being put into the design of special protection schemes and control systems that ensure reliable, secure, and economical operation of microgrids in either grid-connected or stand-alone mode. Saeedifard and her colleagues classify the micro grid control strategies into three levels: primary, secondary, and tertiary, where the primary and secondary levels are associated with the operation of the microgrid itself, and the tertiary level pertains to the coordinated operation of the microgrid and the host grid. The paper presents a comprehensive overview of the existing technologies and remaining challenges in microgrid control.