Multi-dimensional signaling method for population-based metaheuristics: Solving the large-scale scheduling problem in smart grids

•A new method to improve metaheuristics in energy resource management in smart grids.•Day-ahead energy resource management model maximizing VPP’s profit.•Two large-scale scenarios with high penetration of resources at distribution level.•Standard metaheuristics fail to solve the problem without the proposed method.

The dawn of smart grid is posing new challenges to grid operation. The introduction of Distributed Energy Resources (DER) requires tough planning and advanced tools to efficiently manage the system at reasonable costs. Virtual Power Players (VPP) are used as means of aggregating generation and demand, which enable smaller producers using different generation technologies to be more competitive. This paper discusses the problem of the centralized Energy Resource Management (ERM), including several types of resources, such as Demand Response (DR), Electric Vehicles (EV) and Energy Storage Systems (ESS) from the VPP׳s perspective to maximize profits. The complete formulation of this problem, which includes the network constraints, is represented with a complex large-scale mixed integer nonlinear problem. This paper focuses on deterministic and metaheuristics methods and proposes a new multi-dimensional signaling approach for population-based random search techniques. The new approach is tested with two networks with high penetration of DERs. The results show outstanding performance with the proposed multi-dimensional signaling and confirm that standard metaheuristics are prone to fail in solving these kind of problems.