CVaR-based energy management scheme for optimal resilience and operational cost in commercial building microgrids

Abstract This paper aims at enhancing the resilience of a photovoltaic-based microgrid equipped with battery storage, supplying a typical commercial building. When extreme weather conditions such as hurricane, tsunami and similar events occur, leading to islanding of the microgrid from the main power grid, it is not expected that the microgrid would be taken out of service for a long time. At the same time, it is not cost effective to make the electrical system to be absolutely reliable to provide service for the customers. The main contribution of this paper lies in its ability to determine the optimal point between the operational cost and grid resilience. In other words, this work proposes an optimal management system of battery energy storage in a way to enhance the resilience of the proposed microgrid while maintaining its operational cost at a minimum level. The optimization is achieved by solving a linear optimization programming problem while the Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR) is incorporated in the objective function. The CVaR is used to account for the uncertainty in the intermittent PV system generated power and that in the electricity price. Simulation analyses are carried out in MATLAB to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. Results reveal that the commercial building microgrid resilience is improved remarkably at a slight increase in the operational cost.