Power transaction management amongst coupled microgrids in remote areas

Large remote areas normally have isolated and self-sufficient electricity supply systems, often referred to as microgrids. These systems also rely on a mix of dispatchable and non-dispatcha- ble distributed energy resources to reduce the overall cost of electricity production. Emergencies such as shortfalls, overloading, and faults can cause problems in the operation of these remote area microgrids. This paper presents a power transaction management scheme amongst a few such microgrids when they are coupled provisionally during emergencies. By definition, power transaction is an instance of buying and selling of electricity amongst problem and healthy microgrids. The developed technique aims to define the suitable power generation from all dispatchable sources and regulate the power transaction amongst the coupled microgrids. To this end, an optimization problem is formulated that aims to define the above parameters while minimizing the costs and technical impacts. A mixed- integer linear programming technique is used to solve the formulated problem. The performance of the proposed management strategy is evaluated by numerical analysis in MATLAB.