A Framework for Performance Comparison of Microgrid Economic Dispatch Techniques

Selecting an appropriate Microgrid dispatch strategy needs thorough investigation of its quantitative and qualitative performance. The methods reported in literature use quantitative cost-benefit analysis to compare dispatch strategies. This paper introduces and defines the qualitative metrics for comparing dispatch strategies. This paper also proposes a novel generic framework for comparison of the dispatch strategies. The framework is demonstrated by comparing performance of two commonly used microgrid dispatch techniques: Rule-based and Optimal Economic Controls against the identified criteria. These control strategies are modeled and compared considering a real industrial microgrid in South Africa. The methodology of selecting an appropriate dispatch strategy based on a variety of microgrid operation objectives is demonstrated using the proposed framework.