An Energy Management System for Isolated Microgrids With Thermal Energy Resources

Abstract

A novel Energy Management System (EMS) model for an isolated microgrid, integrating thermal energy resources, such as Combined Heat and Power (CHP) units, boilers, Heat Pumps (HPs), and Thermal Storage System (TSS), while considering thermal load models, is proposed in this paper. The developed EMS is tested and validated with a real testbed microgrid located in Bari, Italy, which supplies both electricity and heat to a building at the Politecnico di Bari. The proposed EMS aims to minimize the fuel cost and includes thermal comfort requirements and building models, along with suitable models for CHP units and hot water-based TSS, based on an optimization problem formulated as a Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) problem, which is readily handled with commercial solvers, making the EMS fit for online applications. The proposed EMS is compared with an electrical-only EMS, i.e., a practical EMS that does not include thermal systems, with the simulations carried out for different winter days demonstrating the economic benefits of accounting for thermal system models in a microgrid EMS, resulting in significant savings in the daily fuel cost.