Economic benefits of Smart Microgrids with penetration of DER and mCHP units for non-interconnected islands

Abstract

The coordinated control of Distributed Energy Resources (DER) allows the full exploitation of DER advantages. Smart Microgrids (SM) seem to be the best solution for the management of modern Low Voltage (LV) grids with DER especially for Non-Interconnected Greek Islands. The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the economic benefits that can be obtained from the coordinated control of DER and micro-Combined Heat and Power (mCHP) Units in SM operation. For each examined scenario, various market prices expressed by the System Marginal Prices (SMP) and DER-mCHP penetrations are considered for annual operation. All different cases are compared between them to determine which one is the most advantageous in terms of operational cost. A typical LV SM, standard DER units and typical market values have been considered to provide initial results. In addition, a sensitivity analysis is carried out in order to determine the effect of installed DER power on grid operation, such as in operating cost, power losses, power injected from the upstream distribution network, local DER production, etc. The presented results show clear the economic benefits in SM operation.