Multi‐party energy management and economics of integrated energy microgrid with PV/T and combined heat and power system

Abstract

Focusing on the electricity and thermal energy requirement of contemporary buildings, a joint operation of photovoltaic thermal (PV/T)-based prosumers and a microturbine-based combined heat and power system has been presented to analyse the economics of a grid-connected microgrid (MG) system. The bidirectional flow of the electricity and heat model is considered and is optimally managed using a price-based demand response (DR) scheme. Thermal storage is exploited to ward off the substantial amount of heat wastages that enhance the system's reliability during any disruption of microturbine. The objective functions of both the prosumer and MG operator (MGO) are formulated as a profit maximisation problem where they interact with each other on the basis of DR activity. To establish this strategic decision-making process, the system is modelled as a Stackelberg equilibrium game, where MGO acts as a leader while PV/T prosumers act as a follower. The interaction or contribution of two players in a game is a problem of non-linear optimisation, which is solved by the differential evolution algorithm. In the end, in a case study, it has been proved that the results are quite lucrative for the proposed model.