Sizing and Operation of an Isolated Microgrid with Building Thermal Dynamics and Cold Storage

A microgrid offers an efficient and cost-effective way to integrate renewable energy sources and to meet the energy needs of one or several entities, by mitigating the intermittent renewable generation through the adequate use of storage systems and demand flexibility. It has been demonstrated that the use of an ice-based cold storage system is able to reduce the total cost of energy in the context of an isolated microgrid where the main goal is the procurement of the electrical and cooling demand. This requires every microgrid component to be modeled in detail to simulate the operations of the entire system. In this paper, we consider adding the possibility of controlling the temperature of buildings within predefined comfort limits, i.e. to add as an additional optimization variable the thermal storage of buildings. Additional flexibility and better utilization of the available renewable resources are thus acquired. As a result, the operating costs of the microgrid can be reduced by about 50%.