Renewable Energy Management in Multi-microgrid Under Deregulated Environment of Power Sector

Microgrid (MG) is the combination of different distributed generation units and local loads. It is a small self-sustaining power network which serves its local load. Generally it can be operated in grid connected mode or grid isolated mode. The objective of this paper is to maximize the social welfare and minimize operating cost. Social welfare/benefit with the operator may be used for giving subsidies to renewable based plant, farmers, society welfare, etc. This paper proposes an approach to maximize the social welfare of each microgrid through discriminated price auction mechanism. MATLAB Interior Point Solver (MIPS) method has been used for computing the corresponding allocations and price of each unit in the multi-microgrid system. Also, a comparison of social benefit and the operating cost of each microgrid considering both presence and absence of renewable energy sources is carried out. For analysis of this approach 49 bus system is used, which is divided as microgrid A (14 bus system), microgrid B (15 bus system), microgrid C (14 bus system) and rest of the buses are used in the main grid architecture and its dispatchable load buses. The results of this proposed method show that social welfare is maximized while optimally managing renewable-based distributed units with their conventional fuel based distributed generation units.