Renewable energy sources have opened a new era for stability enhancement and future load expansion in the power system. The regular increase in the cost of power from the grid, environmental concerns, and the depletion of fossil fuel reserves with or without market manipulation have in recent years increased electrical demand [
1]. Photovoltaic (PV) campaigns, energy storage devices, and electric vehicles (EVs) are growing in popularity as the penetration of renewable energy resources (RESs) in distribution systems deepens [
2]. The demand from the distribution networks may be met (in part) by such RESs, which can offer grid services like voltage regulation. For the total energy management system-and-transmission (EMS&T) networks, it becomes operationally desirable and economically sensible to incorporate RESs for energy delivery without interfering with distribution system operation [
3]. The power networks of many nations are designed as a networked system that heavily relies on conventional sources of generation. To adapt to changing demands, this structure needs to be improved. Any nation's energy sector now requires integrated energy planning to grow sustainably [
4]. The public policies necessary for the extensive expansion of renewable energy technologies and markets are being implemented by several emerging nations. Numerous nations have set a minimum 20% renewable energy (RE) contribution goal [
5], while to encourage improvement and generation of alternate or renewable energy, the South African government has set a minimum renewable energy contribution goal [
6]. Consequently, steps have been taken to diversify the nation's energy mix. South Africa published a white paper in 2003 outlining its plan to transition to renewable energy sources (biomass, wind, solar, and small-scale hydro) to provide 10 TWh of power. The foundation for the development of RE technologies in South Africa is provided by this policy paper. Then, in May 2011, an integrated resource plan was released, setting a new goal of adding 17,800 MW of renewable energy to the energy mix by 2030. A Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer's Programme (REIPPP) was established in 2011 to further entice private investment into the nation's energy transition. The REIPPP, an ambitious effort for renewable energy generation in South Africa, has three key focuses: lowering CO
2 emissions; increasing generating capacity; and, ultimately, providing a path for economic growth. Currently, solar energy production makes up a very small portion of global generation. However, due to resource availability and declining system costs, it will be necessary to expand and integrate solar energy into the grid in the future [
7]. A crucial job when taking renewable energy sources into consideration is striking a balance between power generation and load demand. This is a result of the fluctuation and unpredictability of power generation from renewable sources across time [
8]. The sun's irradiance present at a site determines the solar panel's generation schedule. Seasons and time of day both have an impact on solar irradiance variations [9, 10]. For an accurate output value, the sun's irradiation must therefore be adequately modelled, simulated, and predicted using a variety of techniques.
Economic Power Dispatch (EPD) is a crucial and ongoing phase in a power system's operational planning. The process of allocating producing power to the grid units to supply the system load economically is described as the general economic dispatch problem [
11]. In this scenario, constraints like generation caps, power balance, etc. are crucial factors to consider. Many researchers concentrated on the improvement in general economic dispatch problems, whereas research on dispatch considering renewables is limited [12, 13, 14]. Economic dispatch was initially implemented using equal incremental costs, then transmission loss and penalty factors were added subsequently [
15]. Particle swarm optimisation (PSO), differential evolution (DE), genetic algorithms (GA), and evolutionary programming (EP) are examples of intelligent techniques that are used to solve complex dispatch problems that consider valve points, banned operation zones, and quadratic cost functions. [
16]. For total transmission-and-distribution (T&D) systems, it becomes operationally desirable and economically sensible to incorporate RESs for energy supply without interfering with distribution system operation [
17]. Joint generator-side and load-side control has been suggested in the literature to help with power balancing and frequency regulation in grid systems [18, 19]. The liberalisation of the energy market results in new types of competition and paradigm shifts in the process of producing electricity. Then, for energy contribution in the entire generation of electric power, distributed generation has attracted a lot of interest. The idea of microgrids is now emerging as a natural replacement for traditional electric power systems, where large synchronous generators in remote locations could be accompanied by smaller generators and shorter transmission lines close to the loads, providing an efficient and sustainable alternative for the full use of renewable energies [
18]. Both traditional generators, such as thermal generators or diesel engines, and renewable energy sources (RES), such as wind turbines, solar systems, fuel cells, or battery energy storage systems (BESS), can be used as generation units in microgrids [19, 20]. It is crucial to keep in mind that RES projects' operations are unpredictable and vulnerable to disruptions, which makes it challenging to identify the optimum dynamic solution to a problem of economic dispatch [
21]. Since conventional and emerging generation systems are physically constrained, energy management in microgrids aims to maximise some desired objective function that describes the cost behaviour, reliability, and efficiency of the system. It also determines the optimal energy dispatch (economic power dispatch). As a result, RES and BESS could handle challenging jobs involving connectivity to big power systems or serve as a technical substitute for managing excess or deficiency of generated energy in smaller grids while taking load changes into account [21, 22].The transmission system structure at the grid buses is often ignored in these studies, which instead focus on the distribution system dynamics by treating load buses as movable nodes. With fewer studies at the transmission level during the past ten years, a lot of work has been done on optimising RESs in distribution networks. Numerous problem formulations and resolution methodologies have been proposed to effectively coordinate RESs for voltage regulation, loss minimization, dispatching signal tracking, etc. [
23]. When considering renewable grid injection and any requirements for grid optimisation, Kempener et al. [
24] suggested that using smart grids over conventional systems is economically feasible. According to the type of grid reforms necessary to handle renewable energy, the literature on this topic has recognised three distinct levels of renewable penetration: low, medium, and high. Numerous studies on the integration of renewable energy systems into the grid have been done, focusing on different aspects. There are a few works on transmission and energy management system co-optimisation. The transmission and distribution networks and RESs are given specific models in [25, 26], and a multi-level solution approach is suggested to handle the subproblems for each layer in turn. A coordination approach is put forth in [
27] by resolving the corresponding subproblems for the two levels. However, no well-defined joint (EMS&EPD) optimisation problem has yet been put forth in previous works, making it challenging to assess the overall effectiveness of their solutions. Additionally, since the joint (EMS&EPD) co-optimisation problem typically has a larger feasible set of solutions to find, solving the network operation cost at a time may not yield the best result. The outputs of the large generator’s connection and those of the RESs in the net-works are jointly optimised. A system for allocating, sizing, and analysing RES (solar PV generator sources) is presented. For the grid-tied PV power system to operate reliably, there must be a high penetration of intermittent RES. These swift reserves can be provided by aggregated and coordinated loads, but they represent energy-constrained and uncertain reserves (in terms of their energy status and capability). Optimisation-based strategies enable one to build a suitable trade-off between closed-loop performance and the resilience of the energy power dispatch to efficiently dispatch uncertain, energy-constrained reserves. The uncertainty linked to aggregations of RESs with energy constraints i.e., a localised energy storage system for each connected generator is therefore studied in this paper.
In this paper, we formulate an optimisation problem of minimising the total operational cost of all committed plants transmitted to the grid, while meeting network (power flow) constraints and ensuring economic power dispatch (EPD) at the transmission level. Optimised-based energy management systems are used to estimate the power flow of the grid-tied systems in simulated Matlab clear and cloudy weather conditions with seasonal variations for optimal solar PV and grid output for the EPD model. The rest of the paper is organised as follows:
Section 2 describes the related works on energy management system-and-transmission.
Section 3 presents the integration of solar PV modelling and estimation of power output from a PV array and economic dispatch problem. In
Section 4, results and discussion are presented on the integration of solar energy into economic dispatch and the cost optimisation for various scenarios are described.
Section 5 concludes the paper.
1.1. Problem Overview
The reliability issues caused by the uncertain behaviour of RESs are caused by their dependability on naturally occurring phenomena such as varying light intensity, weather conditions, and irradiance. These inadequacies make RES uneconomical and challenging to integrate into electric grids that are rivalled by conventional hydrocarbon fuel-based generations. One of the practical methods to rise above these deficiencies is to install dispatchable generation RESs into the electric grid, such as energy storage systems (ESSs) [
28]. Integration of such RESs with higher seasonal variations is economically beneficial to use with these conventional existing power generation sources, but this increasing diversity of generation sources makes the operating strategy for these hybrid grids a challenging problem, and the cost characteristics of each RESs generators produced power is also a nonlinear function [
29]. The problem of achieving minimum cost is primarily focused on in this paper, presented as the total operating cost objective function.
is the grid cost function,
is the grid transmission line spinning reserve operating cost, and
are the cost functions for solar PV generator and
is battery model equation.
As illustrated in equations (2) to (4),
implies as (operating cost of solar PV and Grid); ai, bi and ci are the unit coefficients of power cost and
is the unit output i of the real power. Note that in this paper
, denotes a simulated period. The second component of the total cost, which is the renewable component of the model indicated in (5),
Where the percentage-based renewable requirement is the penalty imposed on grid transmission line for failing to meet the customer obligation. The sign function (.)+ is equivalent to 0 in the absence of RES fulfilment requirement. The energy regulator often gives the penalty γ as an annual amount. It is possible to convert this penalty value into a daily penalty value that reflects the daily efficient dispatch of power.
1.1.1. Constraints
The power balance constraints are the total generation
as equal to total system power demand
plus transmission loss
The power plant geographical distributions and grid-tied transmission losses are function of its value and number of unit’s generation expressed as quadratic functions:
Inequality constraints:
The power generation of all the grid bus has maximum and minimum limits.
Where are the maximum and minimum grid bus output limits?
The power output of any generator has a maximum value dependent on the rating of the generator with a minimum limit set by capacity factor of the solar PV plant. The economic dispatch problem has been scheduled based on the following constraints.
Equality Constraints
Inequality Constraints
The plants operated with equal incremental operating cost till their limits are violated as soon as the plant reaches the limits (maximum and minimum) its output is fixed at that point and is maintained constant.