Microgrids Real-Time Pricing Based on Clustering Techniques

Abstract

Microgrids are widely spreading in electricity markets worldwide. Besides the security and reliability concerns for these microgrids, their operators need to address consumers' pricing. Considering the growth of smart grids and smart meter facilities, it is expected that microgrids will have some level of flexibility to determine real-time pricing for at least some consumers. As such, the key challenge is finding an optimal pricing model for consumers. This paper, accordingly, proposes a new pricing scheme in which microgrids are able to deploy clustering techniques in order to understand their consumers' load profiles and then assign real-time prices based on their load profile patterns. An improved weighted fuzzy average k-means is proposed to cluster load curve of consumers in an optimal number of clusters, through which the load profile of each cluster is determined. Having obtained the load profile of each cluster, real-time prices are given to each cluster, which is the best price given to all consumers in that cluster.

A Comprehensive Review of Recent Advances in Smart Grids: A Sustainable Future with Renewable Energy Resources

“…However, several dynamic pricing modalities have been proposed for demand response such as Time-of-Use (TOU), Critical Peak Pricing (CPP), Real-Time Pricing (RTP), and Day-Ahead Pricing (DAP) [353]. For instance, the articles [354][355][356][357][358][359] have adopted the TOU as a price modality, whereas the References [360][361][362][363][364][365][366][367][368][369][370] have used the RTP scheme. Furthermore, CPP modality can be efficiently utilized, as reported in References [371][372][373][374][375][376][377], while the authors of References [378][379][380][381][382][383] have proposed a DAP as a pricing modality in a competitive electricity market.…”

“…The proposed study considered the variations in social welfare under different market schemes. [358,359] May 2018, 2013 The authors have investigated the impact of the existence of DER on the TOU tariffs.…”

Optimal Operational Scheduling of Distribution Network with Microgrid via Bi-Level Optimization Model with Energy Band

“…Furthermore, various uncertainties pertaining to the economic operation of MGs have been considered. These factors are based on the assumption that low-voltage DNs sell energy to the MGs at real-time pricing tariffs [18]. In addition to these studies, which have only focused on the economic operation of MGs, several works have explored the benefits of using MGs with the DN.…”

Load Profile Extraction by Mean-Shift Clustering with Sample Pearson Correlation Coefficient Distance

“…[7,8] utilized simple k-means clustering, while Refs. [9,10] employed fuzzy c-means and proposed fuzzy average k-means clustering. However, these studies still require some prior knowledge and information to precisely estimate the proper cluster number.…”

“…Finally, the centroids are defined to be the mean of the shifted data instances belonging to each cluster. Mean-Shift algorithm shifts a data instance X l toward a higher density region with respect to the stationary data instances X n , ∀n = 1, 2, ..., N. The update function for ith iteration with a bandwidth, h, is described in Equation (10). The similarity measurement in the likelihood parts of the update function in Equation 10, specifically the exponential parts, is originally based on Euclidean distance.…”