Microgrid energy and reserve management incorporating prosumer behind-the-meter resources

The unpredictable nature of renewable power, coupled with the influx of prosumers has made accurate power forecasts in microgrids (MGs) more difficult to obtain. A direct consequence of this is the need for additional spinning reserve (SR) capacity to compensate for resulting power imbalances. Due to the economic and environmental concerns, increasing conventional generation to meet this additional SR capacity is undesirable. The aggregation of prosumer behind-the-meter resources for the provision of SR is proposed in this study, and a mathematical model for the proposed scheme is developed. This scheme is formulated as a constrained optimisation problem, whose solution maintains power supply and demand balance whilst reserving a virtual spinning capacity. The formulation is linearised and solved using the CPLEX 12.6.3 solver in the Advanced Interactive Multidimensional Modelling System environment. A 14-bus MG test system is used to validate the proposed scheme, and results show the benefits of using prosumer behind-the-meter resources to provide ancillary services like SR.