A Two-Step Energy Management Method Guided by Day-Ahead Quantile Solar Forecasts: Cross-Impacts on Four Services for Smart-Buildings

Abstract

The research work hereby presented, emerges from the urge to answer the well-known question of how the uncertainty of intermittent renewable sources affects the performance of a microgrid and how could we deal with it. More specifically, we want to evaluate what could be the impact in performance of a microgrid that is intended to serve a smart-building (powered by photovoltaic panels and with battery energy storage), when the uncertainty of the photovoltaic-production forecasts is considered in the energy management process through the use of quantile forecasts. For this, several objectives (or services) are targeted based in a two-step (double-objective) energy management framework, which combines optimization-based and rule-based algorithms. The performance is evaluated based on some particular services, namely: energy cost, carbon footprint, grid peak power, and grid commitment; with the latter being a novel service proposed in the domain of microgrids. Simulations are performed whlie using data of a study-case microgrid (Drahi-Xnovation center, Ecole Polytechnique, France). The use of quantile forecasts (obtained with an analog-ensemble method) is tested as a mean to deal with (i.e., decrease) the uncertainty of the solar PV production. The proposed energy management framework is compared with basic reference strategies and the results show the superior performance of the former in almost all of the proposed services and forecasting scenarios. The fact of how optimizing for some services during the scheduling (i.e., grid commitment) can be highly detrimental for the performance of the non-targeted services, is an interesting finding of this work. The differences regarding the optimal forecasting eccentricity (i.e., the forecasting quantile) required when optimizing for the different services and seasons of the year is also considered an important conclusion of the study. This fact highlights the usefulness of the quantile forecasting approach in an energy management system, as a tool to deal with the intrinsic uncertainty of PV power production.