Softmicrogrid: a Software Assisted Microgrid for Optimal Prosumer Satisfaction

Abstract

These days electrical grid makes use of information and communication technology. Information technology is primarily used for providing intelligence in the electrical grid. Solution presented in this article is a step further in this direction. All the prosumers have photovoltaic cells and energy storage batteries. The cyber-physical energy infrastructure solves many contentious issues of traditional electrical grid. This research article addresses the issues related to energy sharing among prosumers of a microgrid. The issues are namely, (i) intermittent nature of renewable energy resources, (ii) energy loss due to physical central storage, and (iii) charging/discharging scheme of the central storage in the presence of real-time pricing. The concept of central physical energy storage system is inefficient. Therefore, it is necessary to have an efficient energy sharing mechanism to reduce energy penetration to the grid and reduce energy loss. This paper proposes a cyber-physical energy sharing structure which introduces the idea of virtual shared distributed energy storage analogous to the virtual shared memory in distributed computing systems. This concept, named as softmicrogrid, considerably reduces the subsequent charging/discharging hurdles and energy loss of microgrid. This concept is supplemented with an algorithm for charging the virtual shared distributed energy storage.