Customer domain supply and load coordination: A case for smart villages and transactive control in rural off-grid microgrids

Global humanitarian initiatives are calling for technologies to bridge the urban-rural divide in support of remote community electrification projects through micro-utility programs. Distributed off-grid renewable generation has the ability to supply energy to remote communities while smart microgrids are able to effectively integrate intermittent renewable resources through management procedures that improve reliability, resiliency and sustainability. Microgrid control systems are typified by a hierarchical nature with multi-layered functionalities and capabilities to ensure optimized operations through strategic energy management and power flow balancing. This paper considers transactive energy management principles for supply/demand coordination and demonstrates that the concept is effective in managing energy demand response and data flow dynamics in the context of rural community-based energy systems. A transactive energy management system is modeled for rural village DC microgrids, and evaluated through demonstrative computer simulations. It shows how smart microgrid load control switching on homogeneous load groups is commanded through microgrid economic value signals that are adjustable by home owners to meet village and household energy budget constraints. The proposed approach is novel in that it offers a low complexity coordination framework, based on market principles, and demand response mechanisms for multi-priority grouping control of non-intelligent devices in off-grid rural village settings.