Optimal operation of micro-grid in presence of renewable resources and compressed air energy storage

Environmental pollution, global warming and incremental demand to electricity have inclined the countries to take advantages of renewable energy resources. The microgrids have a great potential of utilization of renewable generating units. In this respect, regard to high efficiency and considerable generating scale of wind resources, the utilization of wind energy has drawn great attention. Nevertheless, the intermittent nature of wind is the biggest obstacle to further utilization of this resource in power system. In this paper, energy storage units are introduced as the most effective option to battle with this problem and to redress the imbalance of wind generation. The energy storage units have also some benefits for power system operation by preventing commitment of expensive units during peak hours. In this essay, a micro consisted of distributed generating units and renewable resources are adopted. The objective function of optimization problem is reduction of operation cost of microgrid. An IEEE 33-bus distribution test system is selected to simulate the scenarios. The optimization problem is a mixed integer programming (MIP) model, which is solved by use of GAMS software. In this study, two scenarios are defined, in which the system is modeled with and without presence of compressed air energy storage (CAES). The results show that operation cost is decreased. Moreover, the curtailment of wind units is redressed.