Scheduling distributed energy resources and smart buildings of a microgrid via multi-time scale and model predictive control method

To schedule the distributed energy resources (DERs) and smart buildings of a microgrid in an optimal way and consider the uncertainties associated with forecasting data, a two-stage scheduling framework is proposed in this study. In stage I, a day-ahead dynamic optimal economic scheduling method is proposed to minimise the daily operating cost of the microgrid. In stage II, a model predictive control based intra-hour adjustment method is proposed to reschedule the DERs and smart buildings to cope with the uncertainties. A virtual energy storage system is modelled and scheduled as a flexible unit using the inertia of building in both stages. The underlying electric network and the associated power flow and system operational constraints of the microgrid are considered in the proposed scheduling method. Numerical studies demonstrate that the proposed method can reduce the daily operating cost in stage I and smooth the fluctuations of the electric tie-line power of the microgrid caused by the day-ahead forecasting errors in stage II. Meanwhile, the fluctuations of the electric tie-line power with the MPC based strategy are better smoothed compared with the traditional open-loop and single-period based optimisation methods, which demonstrates the better performance of the proposed scheduling method in a time-varying context.