On the number of representative days for sizing microgrids with an industrial load profile

Abstract

The sizing process of microgrids requires to run multiple simulations that can be computationally intensive depending on the desired accuracy. An effective way to reduce the simulation time is to compress the available data by selecting representative days from the list of days to be evaluated, such as the 365 days of a year, and assigning them a weight. The aim of this paper is to determine a recommended number of representative days for the sizing of microgrids with an industrial load profile. To this end, real load profiles were collected and analyzed from 22 companies. A sensitivity analysis on the optimal sizing identified according to the number of representative days is carried out for two representative days selection methods. A reliability indicator is proposed and allows to show that, with an optimization-based selection method, 10 representative days are enough on average to characterize the system.