Optimal Sizing of Renewables and Energy Storage System in Microgrids: The Quest for Economic Uncertainty Management

This paper proposes an explicit approach to optimal sizing of the integrated renewables and energy storage system in islanded microgrids, where the economic impacts of uncertainty (concerning stochastic nature and forecasted error uncertainty of the system) management are completely investigated. To quantify the uncertainty degrees at different time scales, two types of indices (i.e. electricity supply excess state probability index and electricity supply deficit state probability index) are proposed from the perspectives of system planning and operation. Moreover, the concerned problem is formulated as a bilevel mixed-inter nonlinear programming model to counterbalance the uncertainty and its induced cost at both planning and operation stages. Numerical simulations exhibit the merits of the proposed model and algorithm by analyzing the impact of various factors on sizing results.