Effect of Uncertainty on the Operation of DC Prosumer Microgrids Incorporating Dispatchable Loads

It has become worthwhile to study prosumer direct current microgrids, considering the rise of interest in direct current microgrids coupled with the emergence of intermittent prosumers. The uncertainty introduced by prosumers affects planning and operation of prosumer grids, hence its impact is investigated in this paper. Firstly, a robust operational dispatch model which makes use of dispatchable loads to handle prosumer uncertainty is developed. The model considers power flow on lines and respects prosumer privacy. It is solved using the interior point solver in Gekko, an optimization package in Python. Then, analyses of uncertainty effects are performed. Results obtained suggest that both objective function value and power losses increase with an increase in uncertainty of prosumer power import. Hence, more accurate forecasts make for more economic operation of prosumer microgrids.