Optimal Operational Scheduling of Smart Microgrids Considering Hourly Reconfiguration

In this paper, optimal operational scheduling in smart microgrids in conjunction with hourly reconfiguration is investigated. The optimization problem has the objective function of minimizing total costs including the total loss, cost of bilateral contracts with fuel cell and photovoltaic owners, switching cost, and cost of exchanged power with wholesale market. To prevent the aged and risky switches from frequent switching actions over a short-term scheduling, a new index for switching action based on the remotely-controlled switch (RCS) ages and critical locations in the network is defined. The proposed optimization model is non-convex and non-linear, which is transformed into a Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) problem to be solvable with conventional solvers. The satisfactory performance of the proposed model is demonstrated on the 84-bus Taiwan power company system.