A heuristic method for optimal energy management of DC microgrid

Abstract

This paper proposes a sufficient method for the optimal operation and management of DC microgrids (MGs) in the presence of renewable energy sources (RESs), storage devices, and DC loads. The DC MG concept can not only exploit the distinguished features of DC distribution systems for feeding DC loads without the presence of AC-DC converters but also provide convenient connections for DC distributed generations (DGs) and storage devices for a more efficient, reliable, and low-cost operation of MGs. In order to build a robust approach for the DC MGs energy management, a powerful optimizer that relies on the crow search algorithm (CSA) is developed to obtain the optimal solution. Moreover, a two-stage modification approach is illustrated to avoid being trapped in the local minima of the optimization algorithm and to enhance the search capability of CSA. The feasibility and performance of the proposed method in DC MG applications are evaluated in three different scenarios using a notional test system. The results are compared with others optimization algorithms and corroborates the advantage of the CSA technique.