Implementation and Control of a Residential Electrothermal Microgrid Based on Renewable Energies, a Hybrid Storage System and Demand Side Management

This paper proposes an energy management strategy for a residential electrothermal microgrid, based on renewable energy sources. While grid connected, it makes use of a hybrid electrothermal storage system, formed by a battery and a hot water tank along with an electrical water heater as a controllable load, which make possible the energy management within the microgrid. The microgrid emulates the operation of a single family home with domestic hot water (DHW) consumption, a heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system as well as the typical electric loads. An energy management strategy has been designed which optimizes the power exchanged with the grid profile in terms of peaks and fluctuations, in applications with high penetration levels of renewables. The proposed energy management strategy has been evaluated and validated experimentally in a full scale residential microgrid built in our Renewable Energy Laboratory, by means of continuous operation under real conditions. The results show that the combination of electric and thermal storage systems with controllable loads is a promising technology that could maximize the penetration level of renewable energies in the electric system.