Model Predictive Control Based Approach for Microgrid Energy Management

Abstract

This paper proposes an improved model predictive control (MPC) based approach for managing distributed energy resources (DER) of a microgrid. MPC based energy management systems are computationally intensive and can become too slow for online optimization. The main aim of this approach is to improve on the computational time and scalability of the current MPC based control schemes. This is done by decoupling the unit commitment (UC) and economic dispatch (ED) problems, and solving them separately. The control scheme takes into account the current and predicted prices of electricity, the forecasts of loads and availability of renewable energy. The proposed approach is compared to an MPC approach commonly found in literature. It performed better in terms of computation time and scalability, with a slight trade-off in cost minimization while respecting the constraints of the microgrid. The effectiveness of this approach is demonstrated using a mathematical model of a microgrid within the MATLAB environment.