Two stage stochastic optimisation of highly distributed PV/Battery microgrids with grid connection

The reducing price of photo-voltaic systems and storage batteries suggests that it is possible for energy consumers to justify investment in Photo Voltaic (PV)/Battery distributed energy systems however systems size and potential gains are limited by power quality issues on low voltage circuits. This paper suggests an architecture where a large PV/Battery and external monitoring and control is sized to minimise consumer energy costs while at the same time maintaining Low Voltage (LV) circuit power quality. The paper suggests a two-stage approach to system design. Stage one uses a novel stochastic programming optimisation technique to establish the size of the system (for a given geographic location) assuming the cost of grid import energy but zero income for exported energy. The second stage examines the cost benefit of increasing system size to exploit income from exported energy.