Decentralized Microgrid Energy Management System with Market-Based Energy Trade System

Abstract

This paper presents a decentralized energy management system for a power microgrid, which integrates individual users, who own renewable energy sources and energy storages. The purpose of the system is to make optimal use of available resources to cover the electricity needs of the whole microgrid. Thanks to the energy exchange system, in addition to exchanges with the distribution network, the system also allows trades within the microgrid, between its participants. This way, users can get better offers for buying and selling energy than from the grid. The developed system uses linear optimization tasks to determine optimal power flows between microgrid's nodes. In order to do that, the system uses forecasted power generation profiles and consumer demand profiles, which come from prediction modules. Full decentralization of the system allowed for practically unlimited scalability compared to centralized systems. Decentralization also means better reliability and gives users the opportunity to make any changes to the optimizer. The system has been implemented in Python using free tools and libraries so that it can be implemented on any computer with an interpreter of that language.