Finite State Machine Based Control of Environmental Control Units in Hybrid Military Microgrids

Transportation of resources, ranging from diesel fuel and batteries to power generators, in a hostile environment leads to putting Army assets and soldiers at risk. This risk can be mitigated through hybridization of diesel generator based microgrids with Photovoltaic (PV) assets and novel control devices in Forward Operating Bases (FOB). However, the variability of PV production and lack of correlation to load can be problematic. Battery energy storage is one solution. This work has developed an alternative. Namely a Finite State Machine (FSM) based demand response (DR) controller for Environmental Control Units (ECU) in hybrid diesel generator/PV microgrids. This controller uses an expanded temperature range, constrained to maintaining a comfortable environment, compared to a typical hysteresis controller, and leverages the thermal envelope of the structure as short-term energy storage. Previous work developed a detailed thermodynamic model of the Structural Insulated Panel (SIP) structures and ECU system. This work refined the model, including a new ECU system design, developed a novel, FSMbased controller which handles intraday PV variability, and benchmarked performance against traditional hysteresis control with simulation results. The presented results show significant improvement to coupling ECU energy demand to PV energy production while maintaining a comfortable environment with the proposed FSM-based controller which is ready for implementation.