Green Power Integration Framework for Mission-Critical Facilities using Hybrid AC/DC Microgrid Architectures

Critical facilities such as data centers, healthcare facilities, and military bases are challenged to become more green while maintaining a very high level of power resilience and availability. The conventional approach based solely on AC with grid power, UPS systems, and diesel generators isn’t optimized for a large amount of renewable power and energy storage and typically experiences power losses associated with several conversions and doesn’t leverage fully available backup power resources. This article proposes a Green Power Integration Framework based on a hybrid DC and AC microgrid architecture tailored for critical power. The proposed architecture consists of four levels: physical infrastructure level, control and protection level, energy management & optimization level, and policy level. This article illustrates how a DC and AC power buses, distributed energy resources, energy storage, critical and non-critical loads can be effectively integrated and coordinated to enable more renewables without compromising power resilience.