Microgrid Sizing and Operation

Abstract

The increasing penetration of renewable energy sources and electric vehicles introduce challenges to the methods used in the design and operation of conventional power systems. One major problem is the inherent variability present in them as it introduces supply and demand imbalance. To ensure efficient usage of all resources in the microgrid, it is important that the microgrid is sized appropriately with a proper energy management system to ensure meeting the supply and demand balance. This paper proposes the sizing and operation of microgrid in three steps. In the first step, typical days representing the annual profiles are generated which is then used in a linear optimization problem to select and size the microgrid assets (second step). The results of the design formulation are then used to develop a decision tree-based energy management system (third step). The proposed methods are then used for a remote mine as a case study.