Computational Intelligence Approaches for Energy Optimization in Microgrids
Abstract
The future electrical system termed as smart grid represents a significant paradigm shift for power industry. Nowadays, microgrids are becoming smarter with the integration of renewable energy resources (RESs) , diesel generators , energy storage systems (ESS), and plug-in electric vehicles (PEV or EV) . However, these integration bring with new challenges for intelligent management systems. The classical power generation approaches can no longer be applied to a microgrid with unpredictable renewable energy resources. To relive these problem, a proper power system optimization and a suitable coordination strategy are needed to balance the supply and demand. This thesis presents three projects to study the optimization and control for smart community and to investigate the strategic impact and the energy trading techniques for interconnected microgrids. The first goal of this thesis is to propose a new game-theoretic framework to study the optimization and decision making of multi-players in the distributed power system. The proposed game theoretic special concept-rational reaction set (RRS) is capable to model the game of the distributed energy providers and the large residential consumers. Meanwhile, the residential consumers are able to participate in the retail electricity market to control the market price. Case studies are conducted to validate the system framework using the proposed game theoretic method. The simulation results show the effectiveness and the accuracy of the proposed strategic framework for obtaining the optimum profits for players participating in this market. The second goal of the thesis is to study a distributed convex optimization framework for energy trading of interconnected microgrids to improve the reliability of system operation. In this work, a distributed energy trading approach for interconnected operation of islanded microgrids is studied. Specifically, the system includes several islanded microgrids that can trade energy in a given topology. A distributed iterative deep cut ellipsoid (DCE) algorithm is implemented with limited information exchange. This approach will address the scalability issue and also secure local information on cost functions. During the iterative process, the information exchange among interconnected microgrids is restricted to electricity prices and expected trading energy. Numerical results are presented in terms of the convergent rate of the algorithm for different topologies, and the performance of the DCE algorithm is compared with sub-gradient algorithm. The third goal of this thesis is to use proper optimization approaches to motivate the household consumers to either shift their loads from peaking periods or reduce their consumption. Genetic algorithm (GA) and dynamic programming (DP) based smart appliance scheduling schemes and time-of-use pricing are investigated for comparative studies with demand response.