Abstract
The efficiency of photovoltaic (PV) cells has improved significantly in the last decade, making PV generation a common feature of the sustainable microgrid. As the PV-powered microgrid reaches high penetrations of intermittent PV power, optimum scheduling of over-production is necessary to minimize energy curtailment. Failure to include an accurate assessment of curtailed energy costs in the scheduling process increases wasted energy. Moreover, applying an objective function without considering the cost coefficients results in an inefficient concentration of curtailed power in a specific time interval. In this study, we provide an optimization method for scheduling the microgrid assets to evenly distribute curtailment over the entire daily period of PV generation. Each of the curtailment intervals established in our optimization model features the application of different cost coefficients. In the final step, curtailment costs are added to the objective function. The proposed cost minimization algorithm preferentially selects intervals with low curtailment costs to prevent the curtailment from being concentrated at a specific time. By inducing even distribution of curtailment, this novel optimization methodology has the potential to improve the cost-effectiveness of the PV-powered microgrid