Advantages of Minimizing Energy Exchange Instead of Energy Cost in Prosumer Microgrids

Abstract

Microgrids of prosumers are a trendy approach within the smart grid concept, as a way to increase distributed renewable energy penetration within power systems in an efficient and sustainable way. Single prosumer individual management has been previously discussed in literature, usually based on economic profit optimization. In this paper, two novel approaches are proposed: firstly, a different objective function, relative to the mismatch between generated and demanded power, is tested and compared to classical objective function based on energy price, by means of a genetic algorithm method; secondly, this optimization procedure is applied to batteries’ coordinated scheduling of all the prosumers composing a community, instead of single one, which better matches the microgrid concept. These approaches are tested on a microgrid with two household prosumers, in the context of Spanish regulation for self-consumption. Results show noticeably better performance of mismatch objective function and coordinated schedule, in terms of self-consumption and self-sufficiency rates, power and energy interchanges with the main grid, battery degradation and even economic benefits.

Demand and Storage Management in a Prosumer Nanogrid Based on Energy Forecasting

“…This target is directly related to the Economic profits are usually the preferred objective function in grid-connected microgrid energy management [3,4]. However, when network tariffs are considered and self-consumption aids are not granted, the proposed objective function presents economic advantages as well as technical ones, as discussed in [30].…”

Review of Voltage and Reactive Power Control Algorithms in Electrical Distribution Networks

“…Flexibly combining the generated electricity with the demand is of utmost importance. This flexibility may be achieved through two possible mechanisms: the demand-side response (DSR) or the energy storage systems (ESS) [52]. The demand-side response enables the end-users to actively participate in power markets by offering to reduce their loads in response to signals from local distribution companies (operators) requiring load management [53].…”

“…EA emulates natural selection process [52]. EA is a metaheuristic population-based optimization process that converges a global optimal solution with unit probability to a finite number of evolution steps based on finite set solutions [22].…”

Blackbox Large-Signal Modeling of Grid-Connected DC-AC Electronic Power Converters

“…The basic idea is to update the power distribution system according to the progress of technology in many different areas such as power electronics, communications systems, computer science, storage systems, etc. A redesign of the power distribution system would facilitate dealing with the strong variability of the renewable sources, the integration of electric vehicles, optimization of power flows, the establishment of an energy market where the consumers become also producers, blackouts, congestion, among many other problems [1][2][3][4].…”