Tarek H.M. El-Fouly

• Khalifa University

This study proposes an optimization and energy management system for a cluster of interconnected microgrids with intermittent non-polluting generators, based on renewable resources, battery storage and diesel generators. The cluster operates off-grid and community microgrids are interconnected to achieve better power performance by allowing mutual...

In pursuit of a carbon-neutral future, the integration of photovoltaic (PV) power plants into the electrical power grid is expanding. Although beneficial, this expansion presents challenges due to weather-induced variability, which destabilizes the grid and causes voltage and frequency deviations. A viable solution is the use of Battery Energy Stor...

Fossil fuel environmental issues and escalating costs have prompted a global shift towards renewable energy sources like solar photovoltaic. However, optimizing the performance of photovoltaic systems requires a comprehensive investigation of the various factors that reduce their power generation. Dust accumulation is prevalent in arid regions like...

Although detailed analytical models for droop-controlled microgrids are available, they are computationally complex and do not consider real-time variations in microgrid parameters and operating conditions. This paper proposes Kurtosis-Estimation of Signal Parameters via Rotational Invariance Technique (ESPRIT) to identify the dominant modes in dro...

The rise of distributed renewable generation has made energy trading among microgrids a viable strategy for minimizing operational costs. However, existing peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading models often overlook network constraints or use inappropriate loss-sharing methods. To address these issues, this paper introduces a model for Transactive Ener...

Through the use of incremental cost (IC) based droops, power can be optimally dispatched; however, these droops can adversely affect microgrid (MG) stability. As the load increases, IC-based droops tend to shift the most dominant eigenvalues toward the right half-plane. Prior research permitted a degradation in cost-minimization capability and sacr...

Large-scale photovoltaic power plants (PVPP) are being rapidly integrated to power systems worldwide. However, large penetration of PVPP will affect the frequency and voltage stabilities especially for a weak power grid during individual and simultaneous disturbances. This paper introduces an adaptive control strategy for PVPP to accurately comply...

Electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure development is one of the key aspects of the electrification of transportation systems. However, incorporating EV public charging facilities has practical and financial concerns, especially in developing economies. Recently, mobile public charging stations (MPCS) have been considered an alternate, pract...

This paper presents an improved optimization algorithm for the energy management of a renewable energy solar/wind microgrid with multiple diesel generators applied to off-grid remote communities. The main objective aims to solve the economic emission dispatch problem with a price penalty factor to minimize the energy cost and the emission level. An...

Solar photovoltaic power generation accurate prediction is crucial for optimizing the efficiency and reliability of solar power plants. This research work focuses on predicting photovoltaic power using various machine learning algorithms, including ensemble of regression trees, support vector machine, Gaussian process regression, and artificial neu...

The increasing integration of intermittent renewable sources (RSs) poses a dynamic frequency stability challenge for modern marine vessel microgrids. To address this issue, this paper proposes a novel control approach, specifically targeting frequency and tie-line power stabilization in a diverse source marine microgrid (MμG) with two intertied are...

Nowcasting and forecasting solar irradiance are vital for the optimal prediction of grid-connected solar photovoltaic (PV) power plants. These plants face operational challenges and scheduling dispatch difficulties due to the fluctuating nature of their power output. As the generation capacity within the electric grid increases, accurately predicti...

Dispatchable inverter-based distributed generators can share their power economically in islanded microgrids (MGs) using cost-based droop schemes. However, incorporating cost function into the droop adversely affects the MG stability, and since the main limitation of droop is the lack of inertia provision, a high rate of change of frequency (RoCoF)...

The accurate estimation of solar irradiance probability distribution is essential when assessing the level of available solar resources and attempting to minimize the effect of solar power variability on power system planning. The Beta distribution has long been a popular choice in power systems for modeling solar data. The use of parametric models...

The Inverter-based generator lacks natural inertia, which leads to instability problems in Microgrid frequency. Virtual inertia is a promising control concept that rapidly injects/absorbs active power to/from the power system to ensure the frequency stability of low-inertia systems. This paper proposes an innovative virtual damping stabilizer (VDS)...

The increased penetration levels of renewable energy resources (RESs) transform the power generation schema into one that is more susceptible to changes due to weather conditions, complicated load profiles, and reduced inertia levels. One of the main challenges that power grids can encounter under varying and low system inertia (SI) is poor frequen...

This research work proposes an Improved Supervised Learning (ISL)-based Deep Neural Network (DNN) for accurately forecasting the load demand of Electric Vehicles (EVs). This work incorporates Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU), Long Short Term Memory (LSTM), Recurrent Neural Network (RNN), Fully Connected (FC), and Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) archit...

Inverter topologies for integrating a rooftop photovoltaic (PV) unit into a microgrid are becoming increasingly complex. This paper proposes a high-voltage boosting transformerless inverter (HVBTI) topology for enhancing such applications. The coupled inductor-based high voltage gain feature of the HVBTI configuration allows power to be delivered i...

The inverter-based distributed generator (IBDG) does not inherently provide inertia and damping capability since the inverter is a static part. Lack of system inertia and damping properties leads to frequency instability issues. To overcome these issues, virtual inertia and damping are control concepts that effectively improve system inertia and da...

Capacitor banks (CBs) are widely utilized in electrical distribution networks for reactive power compensation. This study introduces a two-step approach for identifying the optimal location and sizing of CBs in a 34-bus radial distribution network. The proper allocation of CBs in distribution networks provides several benefits such as power loss re...

This study proposes an incorporated strategy based on energy storage technologies like aggregated electric vehicles (AEVs) with frequency regulation (FR) to enhance the frequency stabilization during high renewable sources (RSs) penetration. Furthermore, an innovative cascaded controller is used in the FR loop, and the considered AEVs in isolated m...

The inherited intermittency of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems impacts the power grid by creating power fluctuations, which are mitigated by the integration of battery energy storage systems (BESS) augmented with a smoothing controller. However, the conventional charging and discharging schemes result in a repetitive and chaotic state of charge (SO...

The different fault characteristics of the inverter-based distributed generation (IBDG) units make the protection of the inverter-based islanded microgrids (IBIMGs) a formidable task. According to IEEE Std 1547.4, the limited fault current levels associated with the IBIMGs may result in misleading decisions of the traditional protective relays duri...

Clouds passing over solar photovoltaic (PV) power system causes power fluctuations, which contributes to power quality issues. Power fluctuations are usually compensated by an energy storage system (ESS) integrated with a filtering or smoothing controller. However, there is a great burden to tune and determine the filtering time constant (TF) that...

This paper develops a novel control approach for the droop-controlled Voltage Source Converters (VSC) of Multi-Terminal High Voltage Direct Current (MTDC) systems. The frequency consensus controller is shown to assist in damping the inter-area oscillations and providing enhanced mutual frequency support. Such features, however, might be achieved at...

Increased attention is given to microgrids for their numerous advantages over conventional power networks. However, there are still a limited number of real microgrid networks that are currently in service, and this raises shortages in expertise on microgrids testing and evaluation before actual deployment. Low-cost, rapid, realistic, and flexible...

Uncertainties associated with power generation from wind energy systems and Photovoltaic (PV) power systems present a major challenge for power system planners and operators. To account for such uncertainties, probabilistic models and probability density estimations for wind speed and solar irradiance, and their corresponding wind and PV power are...

A novel single-stage doubly grounded transformerless inverter configuration which can buck-boost the output voltage is proposed in this paper. In this transformerless inverter configuration grid neutral is directly connected to PV panel negative rail which suppresses/eliminates the PV leakage currents. In addition, the tracking of maximum power poi...

The rise in power demand and initiatives towards distributed power generation bring attentiveness to microgrids. The exemplary method for utilizing microgrids is by making their boundaries adaptive. This is essential to meet the desired grid requirements and properly handle high penetrations of distributed resources. The concept of flexible boundar...

The integration of renewable distributed generation (RDG) into distribution networks is promising and increasing nowadays. However, high penetration levels of distributed generation (DG) are often limited as they may have an adverse effect on the operation of distribution networks. One of the operation challenges is the interaction between DG and v...

This paper develops a novel control approach for the droop-controlled Voltage Source Converters (VSC) of Multi-Terminal High Voltage Direct Current (MTDC) systems. The frequency consensus controller is shown to assist in damping the inter-area oscillations and providing enhanced mutual frequency support. Such features, however, might be achieved at...

This paper proposes a fault location (FL) scheme for a two-terminal double-circuit transmission line using one-terminal current and voltage measurements. As the proposed scheme is formulated in the phase-coordinates, the parallel transmission lines are not required to be decoupled, and the proposed scheme can be applied for transposed or untranspos...

Cost-based droop schemes for microgrids have been developed to achieve cost reduction; meanwhile, the stability of microgrids (MG) is highly dependent on the droop control design and its parameters. This paper proposes a hybrid cost-based droop control that achieves both optimal economical operation and stability preserving for autonomous microgrid...

This article proposes a multilevel inverter (MLI) based grid-connected solar power transfer unit (PTU). This work is a technological enhancement for the interconnection of photovoltaic (PV) array and distribution grid for mitigating the present energy crisis and power quality issues. The proposed MLI generates nine-level output voltage with a minim...

The increasing popularity of photovoltaic resources and the connection of solar farms in larger sizes to power distribution networks make it imperative for network designers to assess the variability of available solar resources at a given location. This is normally achieved by attempting to obtain an accurate estimation of the probability density...

In this paper, an analytical method is presented to achieve maximum power point tracking (MPPT) for a solar photovoltaic (PV) array-based water pumping system comprising of an induction motor drive (IMD). The gating signals are generated using the space vector pulse-width modulation (SVPWM) method for three-phase inverter. This analytical MPPT cont...

This paper presents a sparse quaternion-valued minimization (SQVM) based control technique of two-stage grid supportive Photovoltaic (PV) power system with power conditioning capabilities. The grid side converter (GSC) is controlled by utilizing a SQVM control technique. The proposed algorithm enables the GSC to mitigate the load harmonics current...

This paper presents a novel robust current droop controller (RCDC) using a single droop loop. This scheme is unified supporting dual mode of operation for micro-grids (MGs), including grid connected mode (GCM) and islanded mode (ISM) while ensuring seamless transition between the two modes with proportional power sharing maintained. The proposed co...

This paper introduces a new framework for optimum design and operation of hybrid renewable energy plants (HREP) augmented with battery energy storage systems (BESS). A new renewable energy management system (REMS) is developed comprising three components: 1) Enhanced joint forecasting of wind and solar outputs based on deep neural networks and also...

In this paper, a novel step-up transformerless inverter topology is presented for the grid-connected solar PV system. The proposed topology has the features of a DC-DC step-up converter and two-level inverter. First, it offers the transformerless grid connection of solar PV system with negligible leakage current and higher efficiency, and second, i...

This paper introduces a new framework for optimum design and operation of hybrid renewable energy plants (HREP) augmented with battery energy storage systems (BESS). A new renewable energy management system (REMS) is developed comprising three components: 1) Enhanced joint forecasting of wind and solar outputs based on deep neural networks and also...

Nowadays, multilevel inverters (MLIs) are gaining huge popularity for high power transformerless PV applications. Among the traditional MLIs, the cascaded H-bridge (CHB) MLI accommodates lower voltage rated input DC sources, which reduce the voltage stress across the devices. However, the CHB MLI requires multiple PV sources as separate DC link vol...

This paper introduces a new time-domain fault location algorithm for two-terminal parallel transmission lines connected to large scale wind farms. The proposed algorithm employs only a half-cycle data window of synchronized current samples at both line terminals to avoid inaccurate estimation of current phasors due to the generated sub- and inter-h...

A routine task faced by Microgrid (MG) operators is to optimally allocate incoming power demand requests while accounting for the underlying power distribution network and the associated constraints. Typically, this has been formulated as an offline optimization problem for day-ahead scheduling, assuming perfect forecasting of the demands. In pract...

In this paper, a variable learning rate least mean square control algorithm has been proposed to control Dynamic Voltage Restorer for compensating the disturbances present in the supply source side of a distribution network. The proposed control algorithm is equipped with an optimization algorithm based on Slime Mould for the tuning of PI controlle...

This paper describes the performance of a dynamic voltage restorer (DVR) using various adaptive controls. The implemented control algorithms are; the amplitude adaptive notch filter (AANF), the quasi newton (QN), and the sliding mode observer (SMO) based control algorithms equipped with optimized PI tuning for three leg voltage sources converter-ba...

Wind speed forecasting is a challenging task due to the high variability of wind data. Thus, advanced forecasting tools and models are required for predicting wind speed and wind power. In this chapter, a powerful non-linear regression method known as Kernel Ridge Regression (KRR) is proposed and adopted for wind speed forecasting. The model perfor...

This study proposes a new differential relay characteristic to detect internal faults on bipolar HVDC (high voltage direct current) transmission lines and discriminate accurately and in a timely manner both internal and external faults. In comparison with the conventional differential protection characteristic, the proposed relay characteristic avo...

Despite the many attractive features of wind-based renewables, the intermittency of wind generation stands out as a critical challenge. An accurate and reliable nonparametric wind speed probability density model is proposed in this paper based on the application of local linear regression in tandem with a root transformation method, introduced here...

Solar energy is one of the most important and widely utilized renewable energy resource. Despite the many attractive features of solar-based renewables, the wide scale integration of solar generation into electric power systems presents significant challenges to network planners and operators, mainly due to the intermittent nature of solar energy....

Accurate estimation of wind speed probability density at a given site is crucial in maximising the yield of a wind farm. This goal calls for devising probabilistic models with adaptive algorithms that accurately fit wind speed distributions. In this study, a non‐parametric combinatorial method is implemented for obtaining an accurate non‐parametric...

This letter proposes a hybrid Beta-Kernel Density Estimation (KDE) model for solar irradiance probability density estimation. The model combines parametric and nonparametric approaches to avoid KDE boundary bias and obtain a more reliable statistical model of solar irradiance. The performance of the hybrid model is assessed via comparisons with the...

Wind energy has become one of the most cost-effective renewable sources nowadays. However, the stochastic nature associated with wind-energy production represents a great challenge for power-system operations. Therefore, probabilistic techniques are necessary to evaluate the performance of power systems with substantial amounts of wind generation....

The emerging interest in deployment of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) in distribution networks represents a great challenge to both system planners and owners of PEV-parking lots. The owners of PEV-parking lots might be interested in maximizing their profit via installing charging units to supply the PEV demand. However, with stringent rules of n...

Smart grids have been emerging nowadays as an initiative to operate modern distribution systems in a more economic and efficient way. Energy storage systems (ESSs) are one of the promising technologies that can achieve the goals of smart grids via facilitating the connection of renewable sources, improving system reliability, and controlling the ne...

Remote communities mainly rely on diesel for electricity generation. Costs of electricity generation could reach up to 10 times compared to the main electric grid because of the cost of fuel transportation and delivery. With the revolution of smart grid technology, it is possible to quantify the full potential of integrating renewables and smart gr...

This article presents a new approach to enhance the capabilities of flywheel energy storage systems to enable increasing the integration of small-scale photovoltaic distributed generation units in distribution systems. The storage capabilities of the flywheel energy storage systems are utilized to suppress the system voltage disturbances caused by...

The paper proposes a hybrid architecture for electricity price forecasting. The proposed architecture combines the advantages of the easy-to-use and relatively easy-to-tune Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) models and the approximation power of local learning techniques. The architecture is robust and more accurate than the individua...

The recent deployment of distributed generation has led to a revolution in the use of distribution systems and the emergence of “smart grid” concepts. Smart grids are intended primarily as a means of facilitating the integration of renewable energy sources and of achieving greater system reliability and efficiency. Energy storage systems (ESSs) off...

The recent deployment of distributed generation has led to a revolution in the use of distribution systems and the emergence of smart-grid concepts. Smart grids are intended primarily as a means of facilitating the integration of renewable energy sources and of achieving greater system reliability and efficiency. Energy storage systems offer a numb...

Integration of large-scale energy storage systems (ESSs) is desirable nowadays to achieve higher reliability and efficiency for smart grids. Controlling ESS operation usually depends on electricity market prices so as to charge when the price is low and discharge when the price is high. On the other hand, the market-clearing price itself is determi...

This paper investigates the application of dynamic voltage restorer (DVR) versus static compensator (STATCOM) to enhance low voltage ride through (LVRT) capability of wind farms. The research done in the area of LVRT focused on a single machine compensation analysis; however, no such analysis was done for entire wind farms generators. Therefore, th...

Increasing interest in integrating wind energy, as one of the promising renewable sources, has led to an increase in the uncertainty of power system operation. Probabilistic models are thus necessary to assess the performance of power systems with considerable amounts of wind generation. This paper presents a probabilistic technique for assessing t...

Recent deployment of distributed generation has led to a revolution in distribution systems and the emergence of “smart grid” concepts. The smart grid mainly intends to facilitate integration of renewable energy sources and to achieve higher system reliability and efficiency. Different distributed generation types found in modern distribution syste...

An optimized communication and control infrastructure, based on the microgrid building block concept, for active distribution systems is essential to facilitate powerful control framework under the smart grid paradigm. In this paper, a novel methodology for designing a communication and control infrastructure is presented. The new design takes into...

Self-healing is a major driving force in the smart grid vision. This paper proposes a comprehensive design and operational planning framework to generate optimum self-healing control actions in a distribution system. For this purpose, a distribution system with optimally allocated distributed generators (DGs) is divided into a set of microgrids wit...

This paper investigates the application of energy storage systems to enable microgrids (µGrids) islanding operation. Inverter-based Distributed Generation (DG) is the most common type found in modern distribution systems. Basically, many of these DGs rely on renewable energy sources as prime movers, and hence their output power is limited to a cert...

Hartley Bay Community, the home community of the Gitga’at First Nation People, British Columbia with 170 residents living in 82 buildings: 62 residential and 20 commercial/mixed-use. There are three generators supplying the electricity to Hartley Bay (2 x 420 kW and 1 x 210 kW) and historically used up to 2 GWh of electric energy annually. The Adva...

Microgrids are known as clusters of distributed energy resources serving a group of distributed loads in grid-connected and isolated grid modes. Nowadays, the concept of microgrids has become a key subject in the smart grid area, demanding a systematic procedure for their optimal construction. According to the IEEE Std 1547.4, large distribution sy...

Driven by technical and environmental reasons, it is expected that future increases in electrical demand will be met through the integration of high penetration levels of Distributed Resources (DR) (or distributed generation) into distribution networks. Such integration will introduce new benefits to utilities and their customers; however, it will...

This paper proposes a coordinated control method, for static series compensator (SSC) equipped with shunt passive filters, to compensate grid voltage disturbance (sag, swell, voltage interruption and flicker) and load current harmonics. To effectively extract the positive-sequence component of the grid voltage, digital all-pass filters are implemen...

This paper evaluates the performance of a demand response (DR) system, installed in the remote community of Hartley Bay, British Columbia, which is used to reduce fuel consumption during periods of peak loads and poor fuel efficiency. The DR system, installed to shed load during these periods, is capable of shedding up to 15% of maximum demand by a...

This paper evaluates the performance of a demand response (DR) system, installed in the remote community of Hartley Bay, British Columbia, which is used to reduce fuel consumption during periods of peak loads and poor fuel efficiency. The DR system, installed to shed load during these periods, is capable of shedding up to 15 per cent of maximum dem...