Optimal dispatch in residential community with DGs and storage under real-time pricing

A variety of small-scale renewable distributed generations (DGs) and storage units are gradually adopted in the premise of households which enables the residents to promote the level of response at the demand side actively, reducing peak demand through appropriately allocating schedulable loads and reducing cost by including the real-time pricing (RTP) into decision-making of one-day-ahead dispatch. This paper looks into the optimal energy dispatch problem within the community of residents with DGs and storage units under RTP and presents an efficient approach with the algorithmic solution to address the energy dispatch from two levels: optimal control within individual households and trading among neighbour households. It aims to exploit the potential economical benefits of coordinating the renewable DGs, storage units and domestic loads by using RTP as a leverage tool to minimize the electricity purchase cost whilst improve the utilization efficiency of DGs and storage. The proposed solution is assessed through a comparative study by carrying out a set of simulation experiments and the numerical result confirms our expectation.