Transactive Energy: Design and Utilization of Microgrids and Virtual Power Plants in Smart Grid for Sustainable and Robust Energy Policy /

Abstract

Developing countries are now shifting towards renewable energy microgrid frameworks for rural electrification. In such a paradigm, the shift embarks variation in the network planning for future trends. Pakistan is one of such developing country with an evolving power grid. Southern Pakistan consists of large province of Balochistan and Sindh with a lot of population living in the rural areas. Power has not been transmitted to these regions due to lack of funds for transmission line infrastructure even though the prospect of renewable energy is favorable enough in this region to supply country and mitigate the power issue. Even though future policies have been devised to incorporate renewable energy from these provinces, no plan has been made for effective optimization of these resources to ensure maximum and resourceful utilization to improve efficiency and sustainability. To ascertain maximum utilization of the renewable resources for future policies and planning, robust and reliable optimization needs to be done. In this aspect, distributed sovereign control of these renewables is proposed for a developing country like Pakistan in a longer run. Latest innovation in grid technology such as microgrids and virtual power plants can make systems autonomous, especially in these remote regions, and their efficient control can maximize utilization of renewable resources. This paper proposes a design of microgrids with load forecasting for the next 20 years. Wind farms and solar microgrids have been devised according to the available resource to fulfill demand of the whole country. Such a policy suggests quantification and optimization of the renewable energy through microgrid framework under the umbrella of virtual power plant by the use of artificial intelligence algorithms. Python language has been used for agent-based programming using OsBrain algorithm. This will minimize the cost, maximize the energy efficiency, increase renewable energy mix and reduce carbon emissions thereby mitigating the power issue of Pakistan.