Demand-side Fuel-cells and Controllable Loads to Reduce Operational Costs of Micro-grid through Optimal Unit Commitment

Nowadays, the price of photovoltaic (PV) has been reducing drastically, that has been increasing the installation of PVs in both power supply-side and demand-side. Definitely, it is a positive development, but huge penetration of PVs in the daytime changes the load demand of thermal generators (TGs) and increases the peak and off-peak gap. This change may create duck curve. Duck curve increases the TG’s fuel cost and start-up cost(SUC) because of frequently start-up and shutdown, and ramping up and down of generators reduce the efficiency. Therefore, load leveling is essential, but it is a challenging issue. This research proposes a smart micro-grid operation and management system for a large island. The micro-grid considers PVs, TGs in supply-side and demand-side considers smart houses which include rooftop gird connected PVs, fuel-cells(FCs), controllable loads and other loads. Real-time pricing (RTP) based demand response (DR) has been introduced for shifting the usages of controllable loads and FCs for leveling the loads. Neural Networks predicts the PVs output power and MATLAB® INTLINPROG optimization toolbox determines simulation results.