Novel optimal energy management with demand response for a real-time community microgrid

Abstract

Due to the uncertain nature of renewable sources (RS), microgrids (MGs) are becoming inefficient and unreliable. Further, battery energy storage systems (BESS) ensure uninterrupted power supply in MGs. However, integrating BESS can increase MG's operating costs and make the system uneconomical. This paper proposes an optimal energy management (OEM) algorithm that can minimize MG's operating and maintenance (O&M) cost and improve the system's efficiency. In addition, to improve the system's reliability, the demand response (DR) strategy is integrated with the proposed OEM, i.e., OEM-DR. This strategy focuses on maximizing the utilization of RS and minimizing the dependency of MG on a grid, along with fulfilling the objectives of OEM. The formulated objective function is solved using linear programming (LP). In order to evaluate the efficacy of these strategies, the analysis is performed with the real-time data of three seasons, i.e., summer, winter, and rainy. The real-time data is obtained by the MG installed at the commercial building of BITS, Pilani, India. It is found from the results that with the OEM-DR, a significant decrement in operating cost, as well as power imported from the grid, is achieved.