Integration of Prosumers' Flexibilities in Distribution Network Operation

Abstract

The increasing numbers of prosumers, which consists of multiple DERs, brings new opportunities and challenges to the operation of the distribution network. To harvest the prosumers' flexbilities, distribution system operator needs innovative methods, since i) decision variables of the dispatching model is too large to compute efficiently; ii) individual prosumer's privacy is difficult to be protected. Therefore, we present a unified quantitative model for multiple DERs, i.e., virtual battery (VB) model, and integrate multiple DERs into the prosumer cluster in the nodal unit to participate in the day-ahead optimal scheduling for distribution system operator (DSO). In this paper, we propose a day-ahead optimal scheduling model for DSO whose objective is to minimize the electricity purchasing cost in the day-ahead market under the guidance of the price mechanism of peak-valley electricity price. The security constrains are also considered in the model. Moreover, the non-convex network constraints are relaxed in the model, so that it can be solved by the second-order cone programming (SOCP). Then we can obtain the day-ahead scheduling with the minimum electricity cost of the total users, while meeting the network constraints. Finally, case studies are provided to demonstrate the validity of the model.