Microgrid Planner: A Distributed Energy Resource Sizing Method

TL;DR

Microgrid Planner introduces a heuristic, open-source method for distributed energy resource sizing, enabling diverse microgrid design options that meet load requirements and facilitate trade-off analysis.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel global binary search combined with local linear search algorithm for microgrid design optimization, implemented in an open-source platform.

Findings

Diverse microgrid design options generated

Effective trade-off analysis enabled

Open-source implementation available

Abstract

We present a heuristic search method for distrubuted energy resource sizing, released in Microgrid Planner, an open-source software platform. Our method is constructed to identify a wide range of microgrid design options that satisfy a given set of power load requirements, allowing a decision maker to weigh trade-offs between potential designs and select preferred solutions. We introduce a global binary search algorithm to build a diverse set of microgrid design options and refine them using a local linear search method.