Microgrid Energy Management through Levelized Cost of Energy Metric

Abstract

The abundance of solar energy in Africa provides the ideal opportunity to mitigate the concerns on price, reliability and voltage quality of electricity supply to end-users. Rooftop PV and local energy storage solutions in a microgrid where energy is well managed, could unlock significant savings in energy costs and improve voltage quality and reliability. Each microgrid is a unique use-case due to the variation in type, size and costing of energy resources, and the loading and billing structure. This paper presents a methodology to identify and select microgrid energy management objectives using levelized cost of energy as the reference metric. The theoretical framework is validated by implementation in a real microgrid and concludes that Li-Ion energy storage is still too expensive for grid-tied applications in South Africa.