Prosumers’ optimal DER investments and DR usage in isolated microgrids

Abstract

Fostered by environmental concerns, technology evolution and economic improvements, distributed energy resources (DERs) are expected to play a major role in the future electric power delivery. Also, the deployment of Energy Management Systems (EMS) and Smart Meters is paving the way for end-users to adopt a much more active role using demand response (DR) programs by hand of retailers and aggregators. Since resiliency is taking importance nowadays, Microgrids (MGs) are being discussed in the literature. This paper focuses on the MG operating on islanded mode and proposes a local market based approach to manage the economic flows among agents, formulated as a MCP. The paper proposes a model for the optimal investment and operation of DER within a MG under this scheme. End users obtain their optimal operation taking advantage of the existing synergies between electrical and thermal loads. Furthermore, and as a relevant contribution of this paper, a temperature model for buildings, able to consider its thermal inertia, has been developed and included in the optimization formulation in order to better identify the DR capabilities regarding prosumers’ thermal needs. Effects of including DER technologies and DR are presented in a case study.