Optimal coordinated energy management in active distribution networks considering battery energy storage and price-responsive demand

Contemporary distribution networks can be seen with diverse dispatchable and non-dispatchable energy resources. The coordinated scheduling of these dispatchable resources with non-dispatchable resources can provide several techno-economic and social benefits. Since battery energy storage systems (BESSs) and microturbine units are capital intensive. A thorough investigation of their coordinated scheduling on a purely economic basis will be an interesting and challenging task while considering dynamic electricity price and uncertainty of renewable power generation and load demand. This paper proposes a new methodology for optimal coordinated scheduling of BESSs and microturbine units considering existing renewable energy resources and dynamic electricity price to maximize daily profit function of the utility. In this study, a recently explored modified African buffalo optimization algorithm is employed. The key attributes of the proposed methodology are comprised of mean price-based adaptive scheduling embedded within a decision mechanism system to maximize arbitrage benefits. Decision mechanism system keeps a track of system states as a-priori thus guides the artificial intelligence-based solution technique for sequential optimization. This may also reduce the computational burden of complex real-life engineering optimization problems. Further, a novel concept of fictitious charges in coordination with BESS management algorithm is proposed to restrict the counterproductive operational management of BESSs. The application results investigated and compared on a benchmark 33-bus test distribution system highlights the importance of the proposed methodology.