A price decision approach for multiple multi-energy-supply microgrids considering demand response

Multi-energy-supply (MES) microgrids covering different types of load demands (electricity/heating/cooling) are expected to play an important role in smart cities. By integrating renewable energy generators, energy storage systems and load control methods, MES microgrids can exchange small amounts of energy with the utility grid to reduce costs. Also, local generation and storage systems can form an aggregator company, which can help control multiple MES microgrids. But for the aggregator company, how to decide the electricity selling price is an issue. For each microgrid, the goal is to minimize operation costs; and for the aggregator company, the goal is to maximize the profits, which includes the purchasing cost from the utility company, the operation costs of local generation, and the revenues from the consumers. In this paper, we use mixed integer linear programming to control the operation of each MES microgrid considering demand response, as well as the operation of the aggregator company. A genetic algorithm is used to search for the best electricity price. The results show the effectiveness of the proposed method.