Investigation of the micro energy grid operation under energy price uncertainty with inclusion of electric vehicles

Distributed generation (DG) and electric vehicles (EVs) have received much attention in recent years due to increasing energy demand and environmental concerns. Smarter and more flexible utilization of different energy carriers can be achieved by the integrated energy scheduling in the presence of such modern technologies. However, the market price uncertainty makes the energy scheduling a challenging task. In this paper, the impact of electricity price uncertainty on the micro energy grid (MEG) operation is studied and the role of DG units and EVs on dealing with such uncertainty is investigated. In this regard, the paper employs energy hub approach to calculate the optimal energy scheduling and the operating profit of the energy network. The Monte Carlo simulation technique is used to address the price uncertainty and the Coefficient of Variation (CV) criterion is selected for the purpose of quantifying the risk of operating profit variability. The results show that using DG in the MEG, increases profit while reducing the risks. It is also shown that adding EVs to the grid can increase operating profit whereas the risk is almost constant.