PSO Based Optimal Sizing of Distributed Energy Resources in Islanded Micro-Grid Considering Uncertainty

The presence of modern challenges in power system such as growth in the geographical distribution of the customers, Electricity market restructuring and supra-national agreements on the reduction of global greenhouse gas emissions has led to an increased interest in the distributed energy resources (DER). The micro-grid considered in this paper consists of wind turbine (WT), photovoltaic array (PV) and battery storage. Accordingly in this study a methodology has been presented that uses particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm to optimally size the DERs in terms of numbers so as to minimize the total cost of system. The PSO provides a population-based search procedure in which individuals called particles change their positions with time. Proper sizing of these energy sources is important in order to obtaining their maximum potential benefits. The optimal number of units ensuring that 20-year round total cost is minimized subject to the constraint that the load energy requirements are completely covered. Since the WT and PV are dependent on resources which are not dispatch able, neglecting the wind and solar capacity totally generation planning can be harmful for the system with increasing installed capacity therefore the uncertainty of them are considered. A variety of reliability indices are calculated in order to evaluate the performance of a micro-grid. The resulting operations of this method on some testing system are illuminated improvement of reliability and minimize the total cost of micro-grid.