Planning and operational strategy of a renewable energy microgrid considering reliability

Recently, Increase in level of environment emissions and growing energy demand have became a serious concern and it has made clean and renewable energy sources more appealing. The micro-grid has attracted considerably good interest as it utilizes different energy sources all together and provides high quality and reliable electricity. In this work the planning and operational strategy of a renewable energy micro-grid has been discussed in light of environmental and economic consideration. The optimum capacity and type of various Distributed Generation (DG) sources have been found out and their operational strategy for optimum energy management is obtained. The Net Present Value (NPV) function taken in the objective function is used as an economic indicator which justifies the investment in the micro-grid. The NPV function containing initial investment cost, Energy Management System(EMS) strategic cost, maintenance and operation cost, reliability and credits related to reduction in the environment pollution is then maximized using the mixer integer non linear programming(MINLP) which finally determines the optimum capacity and operational strategy of various DG sources present in the micro-grid.