Planning and Management of Distributed Energy Resources and Loads in a Smart Microgrid

This paper addresses the issue of planning and management of a so-called smart microgrid, namely a group of interconnected loads and distributed energy resources (DER) with clearly defined electrical boundaries that acts as a single controllable entity with respect to the public grid. Special attention is devoted to the microgrid Energy Management System (EMS), which plays a crucial role in governing the power flows from the different generating sources and can resort to optimization procedures and algorithms in order to minimize the daily operating costs. The main features of the EMS platform suitably developed to control the University of Genoa test-bed facility called Smart Polygeneration Microgrid (SPM) are here illustrated and thoroughly discussed