Integrated energy management system for Microgrids of building prosumers

Abstract

In this paper, an easy to apply and computationally efficient energy management system (EMS) for microgrids of building prosumers is proposed. It is based on a hierarchical multi-agent system (MAS), aiming to minimize the operation cost of a microgrid comprising a group of buildings, renewable energy sources (RES), energy storage systems (ESS) and plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs). The optimization problem is suitably set up to ensure low computation requirements and it is solved with particle swarm optimization (PSO). Optimal operation scheduling for grid-connected and autonomous operation of microgrids of building prosumers, considering their thermal and electrical systems, integrated RES, conventional and dynamic ESS is proposed. The models used are not computationally demanding, allowing the application to complex systems and they are not being limited to one building scale which is the case for the majority of relative research. Another innovative feature of the proposed algorithm, among others, is that it ensures autonomous operation at certain time periods without the use of any emergency generator sets. Detailed simulation results of different operation scenarios, showed that cost savings in range of 11% can be achieved while a large number of operation and technical constraints are satisfactorily met in grid-connected and autonomous operation.