Distribution Grid Flexibility-ramp Minimization using Local Resources

Increasing rate of renewable energy sources (RESs) integration in the distribution system and development of multi-microgrids (MMG) structures have changed the operational condition of power grids. In this context, the stochastic and intermittent nature of the RESs has increased the need for ramp up power to balance the supply and demand when electricity generation of these resources drops. Moreover, bulk power generation units, which conventionally have the possibility to provide flexibility ramp, would face lack of financial justification for expansion and operation in a system with high rate penetration of RESs. Therefore, distribution system operators (DSOs) should rely on local resources to limit the gap between supply and demand. However, local resources are principally operated and scheduled by microgrids (MGs) in a distribution system with MMG architecture. While, MGs decentralized management could address the cyber-security concerns of the system, this structure would limit the DSO access to local resources to alleviate the flexibility ramp issues of distribution system. Consequently, an MMG coordination framework should be deployed by DSO to confront with the flexibility ramp limitation in a decentralized operated system. In this paper, a flexibility based hour-ahead resources scheduling framework is proposed to be implemented in an MMG distribution system. Finally, the provided resource scheduling scheme is implemented to schedule a three-microgrid system considering flexibility ramp constraints.