Grid-friendly energy prosumers based on the energy router with load switching functionality.

Huge numbers of residential energy prosumers (EPs) will be widely deployed in the next generation power system which is dominated by renewable energies. The intermittent and non-dispatchable natures of the renewable energies will inevitably bring sporadic and unpredictable disturbances to the power system, making "grid friendliness" an essential requirement for the EPs. To tackle this problem, this paper focuses on the hardware implementation of the energy router (ER) and corresponsive coordinated energy management strategy for grid friendly EPs. The coordinated energy management strategy, combined with a fuzzy logic controller (FLC) for energy storage (ES) unit control and an improved discrete binary particle swarm optimization (DBPSO) algorithm for load scheduling, is elaborated for embedded control of the ER by maintaining balance of the accuracy, efficiency and cost considerations. Built as the energy interface between the EP and the power system, the ER is facilitated with plug-and-play source/load/ES connections, intelligent monitor and control interfaces as well as a load switching module, enabling the functionalities of the coordinated energy management strategy to be implemented. Experimental verification shows that, the developed ER enhances the energy management flexibilities for the EP, and the presented FLC + DBPSO algorithm enables coordinated operation of the EP and potential benefits in renewable DG utilization by improving the performances of PV self-use ratio, load rate and energy cost of the EP system by about 20 %, 50 % and 20 %, respectively, while at the same time maintaining the EP system reliability and consumer comfort, as well as meeting the grid friendly requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]