Optimal operation of a trigenerator equipped microgrids

The paper describes an efficient microgrids energy management system (EMS) that is being developed within e-GOTHAM, an European project started in April 2012 that involves 17 partners from 5 European countries. The eGOTHAM project aims at developing an EMS able to improve the overall microgrid energy efficiency by monitoring and controlling prosumers’ energy consumption and production. More precisely the EMS should optimally dispatch the microgrid controllable loads and generators and effectively utilize the grid’s renewable energy resources and storages. The microgrid uncertainties will also be modeled and included in the EMS. Relying on previous results on modeling and controlling the microgrid operations we have developed an EMS that could be easily adapted to any existing microgrid systems even in case of complex configurations of loads, distributed generators and energy storage components. The overall problem is formulated using MixedInteger Linear Programming (MILP), which can be solved in an efficient way by using commercial solvers, leading to significant improvements in solution quality and computational burden. As a preliminary result, the proposed optimization algorithm is applied to an industrial site microgrid, placed in Italy, that is a partner of the e-GOTHAM project. The effectiveness of this EMS is evaluated with respect to the energy management system currently adopted within the firm.