Factors like generation choice, battery size and interconnection upgrades affect microgrid costs, but there are ways to manage them so projects can move forward with satisfied.
In a standalone microgrid system, prolonging the life of the equipment is necessary to reduce the cost of its replacement. However, the size and installation costs of the storage systems must be appropriate. Therefore, this paper provides an appropriate weighting to minimize the cost of the microgrid system.
Several factors, including generation choice, battery size, and interconnection upgrades, influence the cost of microgrids. However, there are ways to manage these factors to ensure microgrid projects can move forward with satisfied customers, as discussed in the Microgrid 2021 conference session called “Why Does a Microgrid Cost What It Costs?”
How to optimize the cost of Bess in a microgrid system?
The weighted Wh method and the PSO algorithm are applied for optimizing the cost of BESS. In a standalone microgrid system, prolonging the life of the equipment is necessary to reduce the cost of its replacement. However, the size and installation costs of the storage systems must be appropriate.
For all scenarios discussed in this paper, the load and PV power inputs are eighteen days of actual 1-min resolution data from an existing microgrid system on an island in Southeast Asia, though any load profile can be used in ESM. The load has an average power of 81 kW, a maximum of 160 kW, and a minimum of 41 kW.
For example, if a battery is replaced when it falls to 80% of original capacity and microgrid operation requires a certain battery capacity, the battery must initially be oversized by 25% to maintain the desired capacity at the end of the battery's life.
Table 1 mentions that the upstream limit of the grid is 80 kW, i.e. the grid can sell up to 80 kW an hour. This is more than twice the downstream limit of the grid which is 30 kW only. In other words, the grid is acting as an infinite source of power for the subject microgrid system.