Stochastic scheduling of renewable micro-grids considering photovoltaic source uncertainties

This paper introduces a new electrical model of a PV array by simulating and tests it on one typical Micro-Grid (MG) to see its performance with regards of optimal energy management of Micro-Grids (MGS). In addition, it introduces a probabilistic framework based on a scenario-based method to overcome all the uncertainties in the optimal energy management of MGs with different renewable power sources, such as Photovoltaic (PV), Wind Turbine (WT), Micro Turbine (MT), and storage devices. Therefore, the uncertainty is considered for WT and PV output power variations, load demand forecasting error and grid bid changes at the same time. It is hard to solve MG problem with all its uncertainty for 24-h time intervals, and consider several equality and inequality at the same time. In fact, in order to resolve this issue, the problem needs one powerful technique that although it converges very fast, it escapes from the local optima. As a result, one modern Dolphin echolocation optimization algorithm (DEOA) is defined to explore all the search space globally. The DEO algorithm uses the ability of echolocation of the dolphins to find the best location. Additionally, the proposed modification method will be introduced in this paper. This method makes the algorithm work better and finds the locations faster. The proposed method is implemented on a test grid-connected MG and satisfying results can be seen after implementation. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.