An improved modeling for microturbines and fuel cells to the energy management problem of microgrids

This paper presents a mathematical model that presents improvements for the gas microturbines (MT) and fuel cells (FC) in the energy management problem of microgrids. In this problem, the objective is to determine a generation policy that minimizes, over a planning horizon, an objective function subject to economical and technical constraints. We propose a detail modeling for MTs and FCs, where the constraints associated with the ramps, minimum up and downtime, generation limits, etc., take into account some peculiarities that have not been adequately considered in literature. As a highlight, we include in MT modeling the effect of ambient temperature in the operating cost and maximum output generation. To analyze the influence of the proposed modeling, it is used a microgrid with a MT, a FC cell, a battery, wind and photovoltaic generators connected to the grid. The results indicate that the proposed modeling issues have significant influence over the generation policy, especially in relation to the optimal operating cost and the amount of reserve necessary to deal with the uncertainties associated with intermittent generation and load.