Prosumer Energy Management Under Controllable Power Transactions With the Grid

Usually, the target of integrating Energy Management Systems (EMSs) in prosumers is to either the maximize their financial benefits or support the distribution network (DN) operation. This paper proposes an EMS to balance these conflicting objectives by optimally scheduling the operation of flexible appliances, energy storage system and electric vehicle in a prosumer. To achieve this, the EMS minimizes the prosumer's electricity cost while reducing both the imported and exported power peaks by implementing a pricing model that incorporates incline block rates (IBR) tariffs on both the purchased and selling prices. Thus, the prosumer adopts a cost-effective scheduling for its flexible assets, while smoothing its power transactions with the DN to prevent both voltage violations and increased power losses. To consider the DN operational limits and dismiss the basic drawbacks of the central EMSs (i.e., power flow analysis within the optimization process, need for communication infrastructure, privacy issues), a novel methodology is presented for determining the power transactions thresholds linked with the IBR tariffs. This analysis is implemented only once in the DN and it aims to: (a) support the DN operation, (b) minimize the impact on the financial benefits of the prosumers under a fair scheme for all prosumers. The effectiveness of the proposed EMS is verified in comparison with four approaches for local EMS and one for central EMS. The results show that the proposed EMS serves as a trade-off between the financial and technical benefits of the prosumers and the DN, respectively.