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 (FOB) featuring diesel generators, a battery energy storage system (BESS) and photovoltaic (PV) panels. The information of the expected electric demand is suitably used to improve the sizing and management of the BESS, according to the days of operation. The OEMS includes power electronics to charge the batteries from either the PV source or the diesel generators and 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 new contribution of this paper includes the optimization of a FOB's microgrid, where critical loads must be serviced at all times. The proposed optimization, which uses Special Order Sets for the semi-continuous function handling, also integrates economic evaluations, by properly taking into account how the size of BESS affects its charge/discharge cycle, thus the FOBs' battery lifetime, in addition to its fuel consumption. 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.