Cost-based unit commitment in a stand-alone hybrid microgrid with demand response flexibility
- Vol.103(1), Feb
- New York Springer 2022
- 51-61p.
Microgrids (MGs) provide an efficient and economic solution to multiple problems in electrical energy systems. MGs supply electricity and heat to customers through wind turbines, gas turbines, fuel cells, photovoltaic systems, and cogeneration. To ensure a balance between demand and supply of electricity and reduced power procurement from the main grid, it becomes essential for the system operators to generate power locally with renewable sources of energy. Storage devices ensure a balance between energy production and utilization, mostly during sudden load variation and power availability. In this way, energy storage devices act as power reserve similar to conventional generators spinning reserve. Microgrids meet both heat and power needs, and also support voltage regulation, reduce brownouts, reduce energy supply costs, improve system reliability and decreased emissions, and improve power quality. In this research work, an optimization framework for cost-based unit commitment (UC) of a specific type of MG is performed and analyzed. Renewable sources of energy including wind power and solar PV, conventional sources of energy such as diesel generators, and energy storage devices like battery are modeled in an islanded mode of operation of microgrid. The proposed model intends to inspect the dispatch of power in a microgrid in a manner to minimize the overall cost of operation of the MG and at the same time reduce the number of diesel generators to be committed for a particular operation considering additional constraints like demand flexibility constraints. The operation is performed based on mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) over a twenty-four hour time duration, and a comparison is made for the simulation results.