Optimal Interconnection Planning of Community Microgrids With Renewable Energy Sources

Abstract

The optimal planning of the interconnected network of multimicrogrids is discussed in this paper. The interconnection planning will enhance the reliability and the economic operation of a community of microgrids. The proposed approach will apply a probabilistic minimal cut-set-based iterative methodology for the optimal planning of interconnection among microgrids with variable renewable energy sources. The optimal planning takes into account various factors including the economics, reliability, and variability of renewables, network- and resource-based uncertainties, and adaptability to accommodate the prevailing operating concerns. A clustering-based method is considered for analyzing the variable data concerning the potential deployment of renewable energy in microgrids. The proposed interconnection planning methodology is applied to a six-microgrid system and the planning results are discussed. The numerical results demonstrate that the proposed interconnection planning methodology will determine an optimal topology accurately and efficiently for a cluster of microgrids, and show that the proposed adaptive planning methodology can easily be applied to practical microgrid applications.