A swarm-intelligent based load-shifting strategy for clean and economic microgrid operation

The required load in a typical microgrid structure fluctuates from hour to hour. Based on the peaks and troughs of the load demand curve, the power system utilities preset different price of electricity at various periods of the same day which is referred to as time-of-use (TOU) pricing policy. An optimal economic strategy called demand side management (DSM) reduces load during peak hours by shifting the elastic loads and compensates the shifted load by increasing the demand during valley hours. This recreates the total demand pattern on the demand price elasticity relation. The novel benefaction of this research suggests a DSM approach based on a hybrid intelligence technique to attain a compromised solution between minimum generation costs and pollutants emitted by DERs of an LV grid-connected microgrid system. Several grid involvement strategies, power market pricing types, and demand response mechanisms are examined in five separate instances for the microgrid system. The outcomes achieved in each example show that the recommended DSM technique may be applied and is appropriate in terms of cost reduction. When 30-40% of customers participated in the DSM curriculum, the generation cost was reduced by 10-13%. Environment constrained economic dispatch provided a superior compromise amongst lowest generation cost and emission for different microgrid load models. Statistical analysis and comparison of the results from previously published literatures validates the superiority of the proposed approach incorporated with DSM policy.