A real-time evaluation of energy management systems for smart hybrid home Microgrids

Abstract

Real-time energy management within the concepts of home Microgrids (H-MG) systems is crucial for H-MG operational reliability and safe functionality, regardless of simultaneously emanated variations in generation and load demand transients. In this paper, an experimental design and validation of a real-time mutli-period artificial bee colony (MABC) topology type central energy management system (CEMS) for H-MGs in islanding mode is proposed to maximize operational efficiency and minimize operational cost of the H-MG with full degree of freedom in automatically adapt the management problem under variations in the generation and storage resources in real-time as well, suitable for different size and types of generation resources and storage devices with plug-and-play structure, is presented. A self-adapting CEMS offers a control box capability of adapting and optimally operating with any H-MGs structure and integrated types of generation and storage technologies, using a two-way communication between each asset, being a unique inherent feature. This CEMS framework utilizes feature like day-ahead scheduling (DAS) integrated with real-time scheduling (RTS) units, and local energy market (LEM) structure based on Single Side Auction (SSA) to regulate the price of energy in real-time. The proposed system operates based on the data parameterization such as: the available power from renewable energy resources, the amount of non-responsive load demand, and the wholesale offers from generation units and time-wise scheduling for a range of integrated generation and demand units. Experimental validation shows the effectiveness of our proposed EMS with minimum cost margins and plug-and-play capabilities for a H-MG in real-time islanding mode that can be envisioned for hybrid multi-functional smart grid supply chain energy systems with a revolutionary architectures. The better performance of the proposed algorithm is shown in comparison with the mixed integer non-linear programming (MINLP) algorithm, and its effectiveness is experimentally validated over a microgrid test bed. The obtained results show convergence speed increase and the remarkable improvement of efficiency and accuracy under different condition.