Towards real-time energy generation scheduling in microgrids with performance guarantee

Microgrids are local electricity systems that integrate demand and distributed energy resources. They represent a basic building block for future electricity systems that are more cost-effective than conventional grids. Real-time energy generation scheduling is an important issue in microgrid operations. However, common approaches in conventional grids suffer from various limitations and do not apply to microgrids: (1) stochastic optimization approaches rely on stochastic modeling, which is difficult to obtain in microgrids with significant wind penetration and varying demand responses participation; (2) robust optimization approaches provide no cost-efficiency performance guarantee. In this paper, we present a real-time scheduling solution without stochastic modeling, considering a flexible time-window of prediction and providing performance guarantee with minimal risk. Our solution is an generalization of our previous work from homogeneous local generation to heterogeneous settings. We evaluate the performance of our proposed solution using the operating trace of a pilot microgrid on the Bornholm Island, Denmark. We show that our solution achieves a performance close to perfect dispatch, and is robust to prediction errors.