Abstract
Grid-connected microgrids consisting of renewable energy sources, battery storage, and load require an appropriate energy management system that controls the battery operation. Traditionally, the operation of the battery is optimised using 24 h of forecasted data of load demand and renewable energy sources (RES) generation using offline optimisation techniques, where the battery actions (charge/discharge/idle) are determined before the start of the day. Reinforcement Learning (RL) has recently been suggested as an alternative to these traditional techniques due to its ability to learn optimal policy online using real data. Two approaches of RL have been suggested in the literature viz. offline and online. In offline RL, the agent learns the optimum policy using predicted generation and load data. Once convergence is achieved, battery commands are dispatched in real time. This method is similar to traditional methods because it relies on forecasted data. In online RL, on the other hand, the agent learns the optimum policy by interacting with the system in real time using real data. This paper investigates the effectiveness of both the approaches. White Gaussian noise with different standard deviations was added to real data to create synthetic predicted data to validate the method. In the first approach, the predicted data were used by an offline RL algorithm. In the second approach, the online RL algorithm interacted with real streaming data in real time, and the agent was trained using real data. When the energy costs of the two approaches were compared, it was found that the online RL provides better results than the offline approach if the difference between real and predicted data is greater than 1.6%.
Highlights
Grid-connected microgrids are becoming the main building blocks of smart grids
This is achieved by controlling the Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) to store power when renewable energy sources (RES) generation is higher than load demand and release power when it is less than the load demand
The results show that the average cost and imported energy of the offline Q-learning increase as the relative error between the forecasted and real power demand grows or vice versa
Summary
Grid-connected microgrids are becoming the main building blocks of smart grids. They facilitate the vast deployment and better utilisation of RES, reduce stress on the existing power grid, and provide consumers with uninterrupted power supply. The policy is not updated by interacting with the system in real time Offline learning, such as batch RL and other conventional techniques such as MILP, MINLP, and LP algorithms, work with data in bulk. The suggested work requires load demand from the user before scheduling its distributed units and batteries This can affect the cost optimisation adversely if the user’s demand request changes during real-time operations. A fuzzy Q-learning approach is adopted for a system consisting of household users and a local energy pool in which customers are free to trade with the local energy pool and enjoy low-cost renewable energy while avoiding the installation of new energy generation equipment Another online approach was proposed in Kim et al [26] in which real-time pricing is used to reduce the system cost. The recommended actions for the BESS are developed through Q-learning
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