Optimal Scheduling of Demand-side Time-of-use Pricing Based on the MAS Microgrid

To improve the economic benefits of microgrid operation and solve the intermittency and instability problems of renewable energy output power on the generation side of a microgrid, an optimal dispatch method based on the time-of-use (TOU) price mechanism is proposed. First, taking 24 h/day as an example, the optimal output characteristic curve of each micro-source is investigated under grid-connected operation mode. Second, the multi-agent technology is adopted to coordinate the autonomous control of the generation side, energy storage unit, and demand side. Meanwhile, the charge-discharge control strategy of energy storage units is considered for the optimal scheduling of different types of micro-sources on the microgrid generation side. The proposed optimal scheduling model is solved by the multi-agent particle swarm optimization algorithm. The simulation results show that the proposed TOU price strategy can effectively improve the output power consumption rate of micro-sources and the economy of microgrid system operation.