Abstract
This paper endeavors a probabilistic framework to ascertain optimal operation of a microgrid with a special focus on challenges that storage systems bring about. The objective function optimizes the operation of renewable energy resources and startup/shutdown costs of nonrenewable energy resources along with the main grid and storage units' costs as a mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) problem. The optimization problem is solved based on a modified bird mating optimization (MBMO) algorithm and a novel cumulative mutation process. In order to capture the high uncertainties associated with the market price, Photovoltaic, Wind Turbine output powers, and load demands, a reduced unscented transformation (RUT) method has been exploited. The RUT method can effectively model the correlation of variables using (m+2) sampling points. The framework presented in this paper has considered five case studies with multiple seasonal and property features. Implementing the proposed framework on a typical test microgrid and a real large-scale microgrid proves its effectiveness and accuracy through various operational conditions, changing the storage units' structure and characteristics, RESs' correlation modeling, and avoiding convergence to local minimums by adopting a newly mutated population. This extensive analysis provides options for MG operation by studying compound cases and providing solutions for every scenario. Promising results regarding the execution time, cost function and its SD values as well as head-to-head points for battery investment costs have been found.