Decision-making solutions based artificial intelligence and hybrid software for optimal sizing and energy management in a smart grid system

Abstract

This paper describes a decentralised smart grid system containing renewable energies, storage systems and distributed generation with human control and intervention. The importance of each element and the interaction between them leads to think about a decision-making strategy. In fact, the integration of a Photovoltaic Panel (PVP) is used due to its availability and its participation in the carbon emissions reduction. Also, a battery is required to fill a power gap or absorb extra generated energy. Moreover, an optimal sizing is needed to get an efficient system with minimum cost. Also, an energy management strategy (EMS) is essential to ensure the power resources scheduling in order to keep a continuous equilibrium supply-demand of electricity and avoid instabilities in the grid, with guaranteeing a minimum cost of electricity. In the first part, the proposed smart grid optimal sizing is determined under real weather data (solar radiation) of the city of Sousse, Tunisia, using the Hybrid Optimization of Multiple Energy Resources (HOMER) software technique. This approach is chosen thanks to its simplicity, effectiveness, and high precision compared to traditional techniques. In this paper, several configurations (Grid, (Grid-battery), (Grid-PVP), (Grid-PVP-battery)) are studied. The obtained results prove that the (Grid-PVP-battery) system configuration is the most efficient and economical solution. In the second part, a robust energy management strategy (EMS) is proposed for two smart grid configurations (grid-battery, grid-PVP-battery). This strategy is based on Fuzzy Logic Control (FLC) thanks to its non-linear modelling and its ability to make decisions relating to energy management. The primary goal of the suggested (EMS) is to ensure the energy resources scheduling in order to keep a continuous equilibrium among the production and consumption of electricity and avoid instabilities in the grid, with guaranteeing a minimum cost of electricity. As input data, (FLC) used time-varying price electricity (Price (t)) to solve an instant decision problem by choosing, at each instant, the optimal energy source (which provide electricity at the cheapest price possible). The obtained results, carrying out Matlab simulation, prove the efficacy of the proposed strategy, not only, in the energy resources scheduling to meet the load, but also, for the system cost reduction since the PVP has been used as much as possible since it is inexpensive relative to the costs of battery capacity and the grid.