Managing electrical energy storage systems and shiftable loads with an innovative approach in energy districts

Abstract

In this work, a power dispatch problem for a system composed of an aggregate of loads and an electrical energy storage system is considered. The approach to solve the optimal dispatch is innovative and shows good performances in limited calculation times. According to the more recent indications coming from the European distributors, the architecture for energy dispatch at distribution level will be hierarchical. The `Aggregator' is the interface between groups of loads and the energy distributor and sends the individual consumers the desired load profiles, following which the user may gets a discount on the energy bill. On the other hand, the energy tariff may follow a given daily profile either Time Of Use or even a Real Time Pricing structure. Given a desired energy profile of an aggregate of loads owned by the same entity, the day ahead price of energy in the subsequent 24 hours and a forecast of the consumed power from the same aggregate of loads, it is possible to dispatch the power injected or absorbed by the energy storage system and the programmable loads, representing them as continuous variables with specific analytic properties. The application carried out over an energy district shows the efficiency and ease of use of the proposed approach and gives a new insight into the field of scheduling of resources in all fields.