Role of vanadium redox flow batteries in the energy management system of isolated microgrids

Abstract

The small size of isolated microgrids (IMGs), high intermittency and fluctuations of renewable generations, and low inertia of distributed energy resources make the frequency an important factor in the operation of IMGs that should be managed considering technical and economic constraints. The fast response time and long lifecycle of vanadium redox flow batteries (VRFBs) make them a promising candidate for energy and frequency management of IMGs. Accordingly, this paper proposes a novel energy management system (EMS) for IMGs which aims to optimize energy and reserve scheduling of VRFBs in coordination with droop controlled distributed generators. The objective of the EMS is to minimize the total operation cost of the IMG while dynamic and static frequency securities are preserved. In the proposed EMS, the hierarchical control structure of IMGs is precisely formulated and the VRFB is incorporated in the EMS to provide both energy and reserve in primary and secondary control levels. Moreover, to get accurate results, the nonlinear characteristics of VRFBs are considered in the developed model and linearized by an efficient approach. The proposed EMS is formulated as a two-stage stochastic mixed-integer linear programming problem (MILP) that guarantees the global optimal solution. Case studies on a test IMG indicate that optimal coordination of VRFBs in energy and reserve scheduling can reduce the operation cost more than 11.67%.