Assessment of Economic, Technical, Social, and Environmental Impact of Flexibility-based Smart Microgrid Operation

The proliferation of renewable energy sources, with their inherent uncertainty in smart microgrids, necessitates the use of flexible resources to maintain grid stability. However, implementing these flexibility-based approaches can have a multidimensional impact, including economic, technical, social, and environmental considerations. This study investigates these effects, with a particular focus on how flexibility provision influences battery aging, which is a critical aspect since batteries are the primary source of flexibility in microgrids. Here, a Lexicographic approach is used to optimize the multi-objective operation problem by minimizing costs while maximizing flexibility. Batteries act as the main source of flexibility and compensate for the uncertainty associated with solar energy production; therefore, it is important to investigate the battery's aging upon flexibility provision. The analysis shows a trade-off between flexibility and economic efficiency. Hence, from an economic point of view, increasing reliance on batteries and micro turbine production to improve flexibility leads to higher operating costs. From a social perspective, the proposed approach increases microgrid reliability by minimizing the cost of energy not supplied. Considering the technical aspect, the results indicate that increasing the use of batteries in order to increase microgrids' flexibility accelerates their aging, hence decreasing their corresponding state of health. Further, the simulation results show that flexibility comes with an environmental cost. Therefore, increasing reliance on micro turbine production and the possibility of purchasing energy from sources with more emissions to provide the required flexibility can lead to an increase in the cost of pollution.