Optimized energy management system to reduce fuel consumption in remote military microgrids

This paper presents an optimized energy management system (OEMS) to control the microgrid of a remote temporary military base featuring the diesel generators, the battery energy storage system (BESS) and photovoltaic panels (PV). The information of the expected electric demand is suitably used to improve the sizing and management of the BESS. The OEMS includes power electronics to charge the batteries from either the PV source or the diesel generators, it can function as a current source when it is supplementing the power from one of the generators or as a voltage source when it is the sole source of power for the loads. The novelty in the overall optimization procedure lies (i) in using Special Ordered Sets (SOSs) for the semicontinuous function handling and (ii) in integrating economic evaluations, by properly taking into account how the size of BESS affects its charge/discharge cycle, thus the lifetime. Results from optimization are employed by the OEMS to coordinate the energy sources and match the critical and non critical loads with the available supply. Fuel savings of ≈30% (and ≈50% adding the PV source) can be achieved with respect to the already improved, but not optimal, solution of a previous work.