Energy storage systems implementation and photovoltaic output prediction for cost minimization of a Microgrid

Energy storage system (ESS) has great importance in saving energy in new power systems. Optimum selection of these elements poses a new challenge to improve the energy management and prevent cost increases in the system. Also, renewable energy resources have been increasingly used in microgrids. The uncertainty and variation of renewable distributed generation (DG) affect the performance of power systems. In this paper, ESS implementations and photovoltaic (PV) power prediction are used to improve voltage/power profile of the system and reduce the total cost of the microgrid. The purpose of this paper is the optimal installation of ESSs in a microgrid to minimize the total cost where quantile nearest neighbour forecasting is utilized for PV output power prediction as an efficient approach. Gathering data of the last samples in time duration can be used for an effective prediction of PV output in this method, which can overcome PV uncertainty due to changes in solar irradiation and other parameters. Artificial neural networks combined with multi-layer perceptron and genetic algorithm are used for optimizing the size and location of ESSs in the system. Simulation results show that the proposed method improves the power profile as 14%, 21% and 28%, relatively to the scenarios of optimal ESS installation without PV prediction, using PV prediction but with no optimal ESS implementation and not using PV-no ESS implementation, respectively. Moreover, the accuracy of the proposed prediction method is more than the gradient-descent and RNN methods by about 12% and 5%, respectively, as shown in the simulation results. Also, the cost reduction of proposed method is enhanced as 24% and 31% relatively to the cases of optimal ESS installation without PV prediction and PV prediction without optimal ESS implementation, respectively.

Automated summary

This paper focuses on improving the performance and reducing the total cost of microgrids by utilizing energy storage systems and photovoltaic power prediction. The use of quantile nearest neighbour forecasting effectively overcomes PV uncertainty, while artificial neural networks combined with multi-layer perceptron and genetic algorithm optimize the size and location of ESSs in the system.