Energy Management System for Smart Grids: Tests in Cyber-Physical Mode

The objective of this work regards the laboratory assessment of the energy management system (EMS) for a smart grid, to be applied to the Eigerøy island (Norway) inside the H2020 ROBINSON project. The smart grid is based on the integration of industrial needs (a steam boiler fueled by LNG) with renewable sources and waste recycling (internal production of syngas and biogas). The mentioned EMS, developed to minimize energy generation costs, includes an optimization tool and a Model Predictive Control (MPC) software for the calculation of the activation and the set-point values of the prime movers. Moreover, a special scheduling approach was proposed for the electrolyzers connected to a hydrogen storage pressure vessel. In this work the EMS was tested in cyber-physical mode in the Innovative Energy Systems (IES) laboratory of the University of Genoa. In details, the tests were performed coupling component models with real hardware (microturbine and solar panels) available in the laboratory. The obtained optimization performance was highlighted on the basis of a comparison with a standard management of the smart grid.