Abstract
The continuous improvement of energy storage and distributed generation technologies, in conjunction with demand-side pricing policies set by governments worldwide, modify electricity customers’ behavior, with potentially adverse effects on the quality of power delivered to the end-users. A major technical challenge is the optimization of power dispatch to minimize customer operating costs under constraints from the supply side. Therefore, this research proposes a multi-source distributed energy resources management system capable of delivering a compromise solution for power supply, storage, and demand-side in different electric pricing policies, using non-linear operating restrictions such as cable loading, transformer loading, power factor, maximum contract demand, and voltage level, calculated using a power flow algorithm. To test the proposed management system, the authors evaluated two different scenarios in an existing microgrid: a time-of-use electricity tariff, and a real-time tariff. The results show that the proposed system can lead to savings of up to 40% of the total operating costs for consumers when applied to time-of-use electricity tariff and up to 20% when applied to real-time electricity tariff, considerably reducing the violation probabilities of power quality indicators set by local utility company regulations.
Highlights
Global warming is one of the most critical environmental challenges societies worldwide are facing, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions is the primary key to mitigate this problem [1], [2]
The authors proposed a management system to minimize the cost of electric power dispatch of a customer’s microgrid by controlling an energy storage system and a diesel generator set. The authors tested it against two different electricity pricing policies: time-of-use, and real-time pricing
The results show savings of approximately 40% of the total operating cost
Summary
Global warming is one of the most critical environmental challenges societies worldwide are facing, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions is the primary key to mitigate this problem [1], [2]. While thermal power plants are amongst the major greenhouse gases emitters within the electric power industry, as they use coal or natural gas to convert thermal energy into electricity, hydroelectric power plants may cause significant environmental impacts due to the need for wide flooded areas [3], even though they are based on a renewable energy source. The electric power industry around the world has experienced an increased growth in the use of renewable energy sources, which has a strong correlation with distributed generation [5] since most of the distributed generation units are based on renewable energy technologies such as wind, solar, biomass, etc. At the end of 2011, energy production from renewable energy sources, except hydroelectricity, was circa 40.4 [TWh], of which 93% came from sugarcane biomass. At the end of 2019, energy production from the same sources
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
