Cooperation in Microgrids through power exchange: an optimal sizing and operation approach

This paper proposes a novel model for the optimal design and power management of a microgrid. The key objective of the proposed model is to indicate the benefits of cooperation in terms of energy cost savings, carbon emission reduction and provision of energy self-sufficiency. The proposed cooperative configuration considers that buildings with different load patterns exchange power through a common DC bus, so that an optimum utilization of the energy generated by local renewables is achieved. The problem of selecting the optimal capacities of photovoltaic arrays, energy storage systems and inverters, as well as of determining the optimal daily power operation plan is formulated as a mixed integer linear programming problem, where the objective function is optimized based on the Nash bargain method. The impact of the daily scheduling of the energy storage systems and electric vehicles, as well as the impact of power exchanges on the equipment sizing and vice versa is also highlighted. We demonstrate the applicability and effectiveness of the proposed cooperative system on a representative Superblock of Barcelona; the results indicate that the proposed approach achieves significant operation cost (15.7%) and carbon emissions (12.9% in average) reduction compared to the case where no power exchange occurs.