Virtual Power Producer and Consumer Agent Methodology for Optimal Management of Renewable Energy Resources

)Received 29/11/2011; accepted for publication 9/2/2012( ABSTRACT. This paper proposes a Virtual Power Producer and Consumer Agent as a methodology aiming to optimize the integrated management of distributed renewable energy resources and to improve control Demand Side Management (DSM) and its aggregated loads. The paper presents a proposed method to coordinate the power generation technologies, the different load types, and the storage system. This method uses a framework based on data-mining techniques to characterize the customers load curve. The optimal power generation technologies dispatching of the smallest equipment of renewable energy resources and storage system is formulated as mixed-integer linear programming problem, due to the presence of the binary and continuous variables in the optimization problem. The model is coded in General Algebraic Modeling Systems (GAMS) and solved by High-performance mathematical programming solver for linear programming, mixed integer programming, and quadratic programming CPLEX solver. The application of methodology to a real case study in an isolated electrical service area in Portugal demonstrates the effectiveness of this method to solve the optimal isolated dispatch of the DC micro-grid renewable energy park. The solution has been converged in 0.09 seconds and 30 iterations