19 - Optimal energy dispatch in residential community with renewable DGs and storage in the presence of real-time pricing

Abstract

Small-scale renewable distributed generation (DG) with different forms together with storage units are now gradually adopted in the premise of households, which enables the residents to promote the level of response at the demand side actively. This chapter explores the optimal energy dispatch problem in the scope of residential community with penetration of renewable DGs and energy storage in the presence of real-time pricing (RTP). An efficient algorithmic solution is presented and implemented at two levels: optimal control within individual households (i.e., managing schedulable loads and storage to minimize electricity purchase cost in 1-day-ahead dispatch with predicted RTP information), and energy trading among neighboring households (i.e., excess energy is re-dispatched and traded across multiple households). This work aims to exploit the potential economical benefits of coordinating the renewable DGs, distributed storage, and domestic loads by using RTP as a leveraging tool to reduce peak demand and minimize the electricity purchase cost while significantly improving the global utilization efficiency of network resources. The performance of the suggested solution is evaluated through a set of simulation experiments for a residential community with 200 households and the numerical result demonstrates direct effectiveness and benefits. Its robustness is further assessed in the presence of prediction inaccuracy of DG generation and RTP.