Optimizing Hybrid Photovoltaic/Battery/Diesel Microgrids in Distribution Networks Considering Uncertainty and Reliability

Due to the importance of the allocation of energy microgrids in the power distribution networks, the effect of the uncertainties of their power generation sources and the inherent uncertainty of the network load on the problem of their optimization and the effect on the network performance should be evaluated. The optimal design and allocation of a hybrid microgrid system consisting of photovoltaic resources, battery storage, and a backup diesel generator are discussed in this paper. The objective of the problem is minimizing the costs of power losses, energy resources generation, diesel generation as backup resource, battery energy storage as well as load shedding with optimal determination of the components energy microgrid system include its installation location in the 33-bus distribution network and size of the PVs, batteries, and Diesel generators. Additionally, the effect of uncertainties in photovoltaic radiation and network demand are evaluated on the energy microgrid design and allocation. A Monte Carlo simulation is used to explore the full range of possibilities and determine the optimal decision based on the variability of the inputs. For an accurate assessment of the system’s reliability, a forced outage rate (FOR) analysis is performed to calculate potential photovoltaic losses that could affect the operational probability of the system. The cloud leopard optimization (CLO) algorithm is proposed to optimize this optimization problem. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in terms of accuracy and convergence speed is verified compared to other state-of-the-art optimization methods. To further improve the performance of the proposed algorithm, the reliability and uncertainties of photovoltaic resource production and load demand are investigated.