A Benchmarking Tool for State-of-the-Art Microgrid Design Approaches

Optimal sizing, placement, and dispatch of distributed energy resources in an microgrid (MG) are crucial for minimizing the operation cost and initial investment cost incurred by the MG operator. Existing microgrid design tools are proprietary black-box systems and the design approaches are not comprehensive in terms of system constraints used in the optimization formulation. In this paper, we propose an microgrid benchmarking tool that captures the state-of-the-art microgrid design approaches and provides a reliable and optimal microgrid design. Our tool takes into account the power flow and reliability constraints and uses realistic cost data which are often missing in the literature. The proposed tool highlights the gaps in conventional microgrid design strategy and identifies areas of potential improvement. The need for an improved design methodology is emphasised by case studies on the Banshee distribution Feeder.