Optimal sizing of distributed energy resources in smart microgrids: A mixed integer linear programming formulation

Microgrids can offer various benefits to electricity consumers, but these benefits must be compared with the corresponding investment cost for ensuring financial feasibility. This paper is focused on the problem of optimally sizing, from an economic perspective, the Distributed Energy Resources included in a DC Microgrid, determining the optimal mix of Distributed Generators and Energy Storage Systems, taking also into account the opportunities of Load Management. The proposed procedure is based on Mixed Integer Linear Programming and allows to determine the optimal sizes of Distributed Energy Resources which minimize the Microgrid Total Cost of Ownership, given location and load characteristics. The procedure is formulated as a quite general method that can be used for different microgrid architectures and different generation and storage technologies, although in this paper it is applied to a grid-connected DC microgrid with PV generation and storage system. Results of numerical applications to a case study demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed sizing procedure.