Profit Maximization in a Hybrid Microgrid Incorporating Demand Response

Augmenting conventional energy resources by renewable resources has seen major growth in the last few decades. Increased environmental concern forced people to look for other alternatives which are eco-friendly. Also, the economic status of the people created a thought to look for an opportunity to generate revenue and earn profit in the alternate energy generation techniques. Optimization of electricity import and export helps in increasing the profit. Profit maximization can be achieved in two stages of operations, which include operation cost minimization and export maximization. Overall operation cost is minimized by reducing the electricity import from the grid and also by minimizing the operation cost of the microgrid by identifying the optimal combination of DG resources such as photovoltaic (PV) and wind energy resources and incorporating an effective demand response (DR) programme. The proposed demand response programme shifts non-emergency loads which are classified here as controllable loads to off-peak hours, thereby reducing the import in peak hours and resulting in reduced import cost. Import cost comparison of the considered systems under different conditions is analysed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed DR on standard test systems. The results obtained are promising.