DG Mix and Energy Storage Units for Optimal Planning of Self-Sufficient Micro Energy Grids

Micro energy grids have many merits and promising applications under the smart grid vision. There are demanding procedures for their optimal planning and performance enhancement. One of the key features of a micro energy grid is its ability to separate and isolate itself from the main electrical network to continue feeding its own islanded portion. In this paper, an optimal sizing and operation strategy for micro energy grids equipped with renewable and non-renewable based distributed generation (DG) and storage are presented. The general optimization objective is to define the best DG mix and energy storage units for self-sufficient micro energy grids. A multi-objective genetic algorithm (GA) was applied to solve the planning problem at a minimum optimization goal of overall cost (including investment cost, operation and maintenance cost, and fuel cost) and carbon dioxide emission. The constraints include power and heat demands constraints, and DGs capacity limits. The candidate technologies include CHPs (combined heat and power) with different characteristics, boilers, thermal and electrical storages, and renewable generators (wind and photovoltaic). In order to assess different configuration options and components sizes, several case studies for a typical micro energy grid have been presented.