172 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 29, NO.

1, JANUARY 2014

Studies on Economic Feasibility of an Autonomous

Power Delivery System Utilizing Alternative
Hybrid Distributed Energy Resources
T. Som and N. Chakraborty

Abstract—An economic evaluation of a network of distributed Power generation from fuel cell
energy resources (DERs) forming an autonomous power delivery (kW).
system in an Indian scenario has been made. The mathematical
analysis is based on the application of a real valued cultural al- Running cost of fuel cell (Rs/kWhr).
gorithm (RVCA). The RVCA-evaluated total annual costs for the
autonomous microgrid system utilizing both solar module and fuel Power generation from BESS (kW).
cells as DERs and solar module and bio-mass gassifier unit as DERs Running cost from BMGU
have been compared. Different types of consumers together form (Rs/kWhr).
a microgrid with the optimal supply of power from DERs. The op-
timal power generation conditions have been obtained pertaining Running cost of BESS (Rs/kWhr).
to minimum cost of microgrid system. The results for different
loading scenarios, using hybrid solar—biomass gassifier unit are Running cost from SO (Rs/kWhr).
found to be more cost competitive. A reduction of 8.1% in the an- Number of days per season.
nual cost is obtained using solar module-biomass gassifier unit to
that using solar module-fuel cell for the same load demand in mi- Consumers.
crogrid operation. Hour.
Index Terms—Distributed energy resources (DERs), microgrid, Season.
real valued cultural algorithm.
Derating factor of solar module.
Rated capacity of solar array (kW).
NOMENCLATURE
Global solar radiation incident on
the surface of solar array W/m .
Total cost (Rs).
Standard solar radiation for the rated
Operating cost (Rs/kWhr).
capacity W/m .
Initial cost (Rs/kW).
Mass flow rate of bio-mass waste
Microgrid cost (Rs). mixture (kg/s).
Utility cost (Rs/kWhr). Low heating value of the mixture
Operating cost for case 1(Rs/kWhr). (kJ/kg).
Operating cost for case 2 (Rs/kWhr). Overall efficiency of the biomass
production unit.
Initial cost for case 1 (Rs/kW).
, , Initial costs of fuel cell, BMGU, and
Initial cost for case 2 (Rs/kW). BESS, respectively (Rs/kW).
Power generation from BMGU Initial costs of solar cell (Rs/kW).
(kW). , , Depreciation factors of BMGU,
Power generation from solar module BESS, and fuel cell, respectively.
(kW). , , Allowed interest rate of return on
initial investment for BMGU, fuel
cell, and BESS, respectively.
Manuscript received November 13, 2012; revised March 04, 2013, May 31,
Rate of depreciation.
2013, and August 27, 2013; accepted August 27, 2013. Date of publication
September 17, 2013; date of current version December 16, 2013. Paper no. Lifetime of DERs (years).
TPWRS-01267-2012.
The authors are with the Department of Power Engineering, Ja- , , , Initial costs of switching
davpur University, Kolkata 700098, India (e-mail: trinasom@gmail.com; equipments, transformer, cable,
chakraborty_niladri@hotmail.com).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPWRS.2013.2280214
and controller, respectively (Rs).

0885-8950 © 2013 IEEE

SOM AND CHAKRABORTY: STUDIES ON ECONOMIC FEASIBILITY OF AN AUTONOMOUS POWER DELIVERY SYSTEM
, , , and The interest rates on initial
investment of switching equipments,
transformer, cable, and controller,
respectively
, , , and Depreciation factors of switching
equipments, transformer, cable, and
controller, respectively.
, Purchased power and sold power
(kW).
, and Rate of purchased power, rate of
selling power, and base charge of
electricity, respectively (Rs/kWhr).
I. INTRODUCTION
W ITH THE growing awareness of the need to produce
power economically most of conventional energy
resources in centralized power providing schemes are facing
high pressure for environmental protection. Consequently,
centralized electricity supply services are shifting towards the
newly developing technology of dispersed systems, known
as distributed energy resources (DERs). DERs or distributed
generators (DG) are usually located close to energy loads and
efficiently distribute energy with minimum losses. The DERs
play a key role in reducing environmental pollution through
utilization of non-conventional and renewable energy sources
such as fuel cells, solar modules, wind power, and biomass
gassifier units. Often, DERs share small- to medium-sized
markets which are expected to increase in the future, leading to
a much more decentralized power-delivery system. A number
of works [1]–[6] relating to the design and operation of DERs
are available in the literature, but ample attention has not yet
been paid to the economic issues associated with DERs. To
overcome the power control, protection, and distribution diffi-
culties in a conventional power delivery system, the concept of
microgrid has come up as a new electricity-delivery system [1].
Possibilities of developing a microgrid with DERs have been
discussed in the literature [7]–[9]. Though the technical issues
of the microgrid have been dealt with by several researchers
[9]–[11], the economic estimation of these newly built micro-
grids has not yet been sufficiently dealt with and standardized.
Zoka et al. [12] presented a technique of minimizing the
total cost of a microgrid energy-delivery system by optimal
operation planning of DERs. Though their method provided
a precise solution, it could not take into account issues such
as imprecision, partial truth, uncertainty, and approximation
which are essential to achieving tractability, robustness, ease of
implementation, and low solution cost. In order to arrive at a
solution that incorporates all of these issues, it is apparent that
soft computing techniques could be more beneficial and adap-
tive in nature. Applications of different evolutionary methods
on economic load dispatch and load-scheduling problems are
available in the literature [13]–[17]. However, evolutionary
approach in the analysis of energy economy for a microgrid
system with different frameworks of energy-delivery resources
173
can hardly be found in the literature. Among many evolu-
tionary techniques, the cultural algorithm [18] is a high-level
searching technique. Cultural algorithms support an additional
mechanism for information extraction during the execution of
the algorithm, avoiding the need to encode the information a
priori. It reduces the need for every individual to waste energy
for acquiring domain or constraint knowledge by bypassing
trial-and-error iterations. By adding domain knowledge, it
provides a mechanism that can extract knowledge from the
problem during the evolutionary process and thus accelerate
its convergence. This process of extraction and use of the
information has been shown to be very effective in decreasing
computational cost while approximating global optima in
unconstrained, constrained, and dynamic optimization [19].
However, application of this technique to solve economic
problems that include microgrid and DER is sparse in the
literature. The present work deals with the economic estimation
of consumer-based power-delivery systems through optimal
power operation planning of hybrid DERs for different cases
of Indian load demand scenarios. Due to a huge gap in power
demand and supply and lack of availability of data on the
operation of microgrid systems, attempts have been made for
different case studies by considering an Indian power-deliv-
ering framework in a small locality under two types of seasons.
The variation or shortfall in load demand between the winter
and summer seasons has been taken into account to cover up the
total power demand of every consumer over a whole year. To
cope with this shortfall in power generation, microgrids driven
by diesel generator sets are often formed in small localities.
These obviously have an adverse impact on the environment.
Fuel cells operate without high-temperature combustion. The
losses associated with mechanical-to-electrical conversion pro-
cesses, as found in all conventional electrical power-producing
systems, are nil in the case of fuel cells. Renewable energy
sources are found to improve the status of the environment
by eliminating the harmful gases emitted by diesel generators
along with saving the running fuel costs for different nonre-
newable resources. Among the renewable resources, the wind
energy is place-dependent and generally varies from season to
season and sometimes becomes unpredictable. As India is a
tropical country with reliable daily solar radiations, production
of consumable electricity from solar energy resources can also
be highly effective. Moreover, agriculture being an important
sector of the Indian economy, biomass resources is abundantly
available and therefore can be potentially exploited for elec-
tricity production.
Hence, the present power delivery systems comprise fuel
cells, solar modules, and biomass gassifier units as DERs
or DGs along with a battery system to supply power to a
small locality. Moreover, a provision for purchasing electricity
in contract with utility is also considered in both types of
power-delivery systems. The microgrid system considered for
the economic analysis has been structured by connecting the
DERs to the consumers’ load through transformers, circuit
breakers, distribution lines, and a controller. This corresponds
to five types of consumers, namely, hostel, bank and post
174 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 29, NO. 1, JANUARY 2014

office, market, campus quarters, and hospital with two types of A. Objective Function
seasonal load variations in a small Indian residential locality. The objective function is the total annual cost of the con-
Finally, the paper depicts an economic comparison for two sumer-based microgrid power system, which is given by
test cases of a power-delivery system utilizing two different
hybrid DERs. The mathematical analyses are performed by the
application of a real valued cultural algorithm (RVCA). (1)

where , , , and are operating cost, initial cost, mi-

II. PROBLEM FORMULATION crogrid cost, and utility cost, respectively. As the operating cost
varies with different types of DERs for different operating
The cost evaluation of consumer based Indian power delivery periods, hence is considered as for case 1, and
system, have been studied by considering two sets of DERs. The is considered as for case 2. The operating costs for cases 1
test cases are given as follows. and 2 are given as
1) Consumers operate as microgrid power system using a
solar module and a biomass gasifier unit (BMGU) as the
DERs along with a battery energy storage system (BESS).
2) Consumers operate as a microgrid power system using fuel
cell and solar module as the DERs, beside BESS.
These test cases has been chosen in anticipation of a future
scenario where simultaneous operation of multiple nonconven-
tional and/or renewable DERs and consumers organized into
microgrids will be a presumably cheaper solution to the energy
and environmental challenges being faced by mankind.
This work deals with distributed generation, wherein the
(2)
generators are placed close to the consumers, so that network
constraints which otherwise become significant during trans-
mission can be neglected. However, Table II and Appendix B
may be consulted for the pricing of microgrid constructional
elements such as distribution cables, transformers, controllers
and circuit breakers. The DERs comprise phosphoric acid
fuel cells (PAFC), solar photovoltaic system (SPSs), BMGUs,
and a lead acid BESS. PAFC is the most advanced among
the various types of fuel cells having a capacity ranging from
50 kW to 11 MW [20].1 . High efficiency, low chemical and
thermal emissions, siting and fuel flexibility, reliability, low
maintenance, excellent part-load performance, and modularity (3)
of PAFC prove to be more advantageous over conventional
power generating equipment [21][22]. Nowadays, micropower
systems consisting of solar modules have a better economical The first term on the right-hand side of (2) and (3) is the
merit to serve a nearby load [23], [24].2 Biomass gasifica- total operating cost for hybrid solar-biomass DER and hybrid
tion energy-generating units are an important decentralized solar-fuel cell DER respectively. and are power gen-
power technology [25]. In order to utilize biomass energy, eration and running cost of BMGU respectively, while and
for electric power production, the gasification process, though are power generation and running cost of fuel cell respec-
tively. The second term represents the operating cost of the
less efficient than combustion, but it is more environmental
BESS with and as power generation and operating cost
friendly compared with that of combustion [26]. Moreover,
of Battery respectively. The last term in gives us the total oper-
in the Indian context, sustainable bio-energy is fast gaining in
ating cost of solar module, where is the power generation
importance [28], [29]. Among all batteries, lead acid battery
from solar module; is the operating cost of solar module
is technologically the most mature, having high efficiency
and is equal to zero. The number of days per season is repre-
with lowest initial storage cost [27]. A provision of purchasing
sented by . , , and are the consumer, season
and selling of electricity in contract with utility has also been and time index respectively.
considered. Economic assessment is made by minimizing total The procedure for calculating annual operation cost is as fol-
annual cost subject to the physical constraints of balanced lows; in reference to (2), the biomass gassifier generates a power
power demand–supply and ranges for the installed capacity of in kW, which when multiplied with , i.e., running cost
DERs. in Rs/kWhr gives the cost of running the gassifier for that partic-
1[Online]. Available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/fuel_cell ular hour. Similarly, when summed over the loading
2[Online]. Available: http://sustech.cc/soq/Sustainable_Technologies_ hours to gives us the total cost of running the gassifier
Solar_SOQ.pdf for a day; this result, when further multiplied by the number of
SOM AND CHAKRABORTY: STUDIES ON ECONOMIC FEASIBILITY OF AN AUTONOMOUS POWER DELIVERY SYSTEM 175

days in a season (243 days for summer and 122 days considered as , , , and , respectively. The annual
for winter) is the total cost of running the gassifier for a season. returns on the capital base for these equipments are given as
Adding the cost for two seasons, we get the annual cost of run- , , , and , respectively.
ning the gassifier. The above operations are repeated with dif- The multiplying factors for determining the annual depreci-
ferent DERs and different consumers. ation values for switching equipment, transformer, cable and
The power generated from solar energy depends on certain controller are , , , and , respectively. These are also com-
geographical and environmental factors which are expressed puted by the sinking fund method with the respective deprecia-
[23] as shown by tion rates and lifetimes.
The utility cost is given as
(4)

where is the derating factor, is the rated capacity of

the solar array, and and are global solar radiation incident
on the surface of solar array and standard solar radiation for the
rated capacity.
The BMGU is based on fluid-bed gasification of bio-mass (10)
wastes like agricultural crops and wood wastes which produces
useful electric energy. The transfer function is given in (5) as; The first term of the above equation gives us the cost related
to the electricity purchased from the utility. The second term
(5) corresponds to the income by selling electricity to the utility,
and the last term is the base charge of electricity for contracting
where M is the mass flow rate of biomass waste mixture, with the utility. The power purchasing and selling rates for pur-
is the low heating value of the mixture, and is the overall chased power and of selling power are and ,
efficiency of the biomass production unit and hr is the operating respectively. The base charge of electricity for contracting with
hours. the utility is considered as . However, these costs are subjected
Different DERs results in different initial costs for case 1 and to many constraints that need to be considered for economic
case 2. The initial costs is calculated as for case 1 and analysis.
for case 2, from
B. Constraining Function
In order to minimize the total cost in (1), the optimal power
operation planning of DERs is considered as the main functional
(6) constraint. This constraint is expressed by

(7)

where the initial costs of fuel cell, BMGU, and BESS are ,
, and , respectively. For determining the total annual (11)
depreciation expenses of fuel cell, BMGU, and BESS, the initial
where DE is the load demand for n different consumers.
capital costs are multiplied by factors , , and , respectively.
In addition, the optimization procedure is also subject to fol-
, , and are the allowed interest rate of return on the
lowing auxiliary constraints:
initial investment by the funding agency. is the initial cost of
the solar photovoltaic system. A sinking fund method has been (12)
used to find , , and with as the rate of depreciation and
(13)
as the lifetime of DERs. Hence, , , and can be found
as (14)
(15)
(8) (16)

The microgrid cost is expressed as: where (12)–)15) give us the upper and lower limits of power
output from distributed generators and battery energy storage
system to match the electric demand, respectively, while (16)
(9) ensures that all of the variables are positive. , ,
, and are the installed capacities for BMGU, fuel
where the initial costs of the switching equipment, transformer, cell, solar PV system, and BESS, respectively.
cable, and controller are given as , , , and , With the objective function and constraining functions known
respectively. The interest rates on the initial investment of a priori, a real valued cultural algorithm has been applied for
switching equipment, transformer, cable, and controller are economic analysis of these systems. However, this proposed
176 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 29, NO. 1, JANUARY 2014

soft computing method has been applied to the specific cases,

as will be discussed in Section III.

III. SOLUTION METHODOLOGY

Cultural algorithm (CA) serves as an extension of conven-
tional evolutionary computational approaches by enhancing
search ability and reducing computational time. CA is an in-
heritance process which involves two levels of operations [30].
This evolutionary technique follows the cultural evolution of
the society, consisting of several classes of people. Though all
classes of people obey some rules and regulations and circulate
it to their offspring, the elite class of people define and regulate
the norms. The knowledge provided by those people becomes
the governing culture of the society. Thus, the culture or
knowledge progresses from generation to generation, making
the new generation more advanced and fit for survival [31].
The CA involves the following operational steps [32], where,
at first, a set of individuals depending on their behavioral traits
are generated. Second, a belief space is initialized with two
types of knowledge, namely, normative knowledge, which is ac-
quired by the individuals’ constrained domain, and situational
knowledge, which is based on the generalized description pro-
duced by individuals from their experiences. Fig. 1. Flowchart of real valued CA.
Next, the set of individuals are evaluated by using several
socially encouraging operators forming a new set of the popu-
lation. The normative knowledge of belief space influences the Step 1) A belief space is initialized with an empty domain-
evaluation. This domain guides the population in a better direc- specific knowledge and situational knowledge by
tion by modifying it using a set of problem-specific operators, setting all elements to a value of zero.
known as influence function. Step 2) An initial population matrix has been created to ini-
Finally, the selections of the best individuals to be evaluated tialize population space as
for the next iterations are done under the dependence of the
situational knowledge, which is generally performed using an
accepted function. Hence, in order to perform cultural evolu-
tion, both levels share a communication link which dictates
the rules regarding the type of information to be exchanged
between population space and belief space. Along with sharing
and influencing knowledge, it also involves updating situational where describes the
and normative knowledge [33]. The algorithm adopted in this cost corresponding to the power generations by
work (RVCA) is capable of dealing with the traits associated fuel cell, BMGU, solar module, BESS, purchasing
with the individuals in the population which are real valued in power, and selling power, respectively, as
nature. Unlike other soft computing techniques such as genetic
algorithm, differential evolution, and simulated annealing,
RVCA considers both situational (objective) knowledge and
normative (constraint) knowledge while evolving the solutions.
Further, the situational and normative knowledge which are
updated through the iterations influence each other’s updating,
thus providing a further screened and better result. The cen-
tral idea of RVCA is to preserve the acceptable normative These generations vary on hours of power de-
knowledge in the belief space and discard the unacceptable mand, with a population size of for every con-
ones, which leads to an efficient search for the optimal results. sumers, where . Each column of the ma-
The flow diagram of the algorithm (RVCA) considered for the trix in population space corresponds to each variable
solutions in the present problem is shown in Fig. 1. while each row denotes the number of individuals
generated for each variable of the population.
A. Development of the Proposed Algorithm Step 3) The best individuals from the initial population are
This RVCA method has been efficiently utilized to have the selected by the objective function, which are sets as
optimal value for the above-mentioned problem. The implemen- the situational belief space knowledge for the first
tation logic of this evolutionary method is briefly described in iteration. This also stores the fittest value relating to
the following steps. the best individuals.
SOM AND CHAKRABORTY: STUDIES ON ECONOMIC FEASIBILITY OF AN AUTONOMOUS POWER DELIVERY SYSTEM 177

Step 4) The lower and upper boundaries of the intervals for

each individual are stored in the normative part of
the belief space as domain-specific knowledge or
constraint knowledge. Regarding the constraints of
the problem, the interval given in the normative part
is subdivided into subintervals such that a portion of
the search space is divided into the number of fea-
sible individuals and the number of infeasible indi-
viduals within that interval [32]. The fitness for each
extreme of the interval is considered here as history
knowledge [32].
Step 5) Off springs solutions are generated by using muta-
tion operators with the affect of influence function.
This gives solutions. The influence function pro-
tocol is based on the constraint knowledge and his- Fig. 2. Load demand variation of all of the consumers forming a microgrid for
tory knowledge. a day.
Step 6) Selection of the solutions are performed on the basis
of better fitness value resulting from objective func- TABLE I
tion, i.e., the better of the two solutions is the candi- PARAMETERS RELATED TO THE COST OF DERS
date which replaces the current best solutions. This
forms a population of new solutions having the same
matrix dimension as that of the initial population.
Step 7) Next, updating of the situational knowledge in the
belief space is done by assuming top 40% accep-
tance function. The two best solutions of the present
population matrix are accepted and stored in the be-
lief space.
Step 8) The update of the constraint knowledge is also exe-
cuted by the accept function. This works by adding
the domain of each individual solutions of the new
population matrix or pool that falls into the region
of feasible region.
When the constraining interval for each individual is
updated, fitness for each extreme of the interval are
changed, which influences the evaluation of popula-
tion space for the next iteration as history knowledge
[32].
Step 9) Steps 6)–8) are repeated for further evolution of of consumers based microgrid for summer and winter season
the population to obtain better individuals corre- are given in Fig. 2.
sponding to the fitness value or minimum cost value. The input parameters required for estimating the cost of a mi-
As a result, the feasible and infeasible regions are crogrid power-delivering system include the initial and running
reinitialized for every iteration. cost of DERs, constructional cost of a microgrid power system,
Step 10) When the difference between the fittest values as and electricity charges from the conventional power grid. The
compared with the end of every generation from that total cost of BMGU, PAFC, and BESS comprises two major
of its previous one leads to a negligible value, that parts: net structure value cost and running cost, while SPS does
individual population solution is considered to be not include any running cost. The initial and operating costs of
the global optimal solution. Then, the numbers of the DERs for two specific test cases 1 and 2, as mentioned in
generations or iterations stop. The number of gen- Section II, are presented in Table I , [34], [35]–[38].3
erations was so chosen as to ensure that the per- The initial installation of DERs depends on different load de-
centage error between the costs calculated in con- mands for different consumers. For the kW range of load de-
secutive generations is of the order of 0.001%. mand, an enormous amount of Joule heating resulting from the
large current flow may occur. It is known [39] that the costs
IV. INPUT PARAMETERS associated with the cables needing to avoid damage from Joule
heating are much larger than the costs associated with setting up
Temporal variations of load during a day in a small residential
transformers. Thus, a step-up transformer at the generation site
locality of an academic institution in an Indian city are consid-
and a step-down transformer at the consumers’ end have been
ered. Consumers in the form of hostel, market, bank and post
installed for safe and reliable power transmission. Moreover, a
office, hospital, and campus-quarters belonging to the specific
locality together form a microgrid. The typical load variations 3[Online]. Available: http://www.ashden.org/biomass-gasification
178
TABLE II
MICROGRID CONSTRUCTIONAL COST
TABLE III
OPTIMAL POWER GENERATION FOR CASES 1 AND 2
controller, change-over switches, and circuit breakers are placed
at a common point of the BMGU, PAFC, solar module, battery,
and grid. The costs for constructing the microgrid by consid-
ering SPS and BMGU as DERs and using fuel cell and SPS as
DERs are given in Table II.
V. RESULTS
In this work, economic analysis of consumer-based power-
delivery systems through optimal operation of DERs has been
made through the application of RVCA. A comparative study
relating to the total cost of power-delivery systems for two dif-
ferent cases of DERs, i.e., case 1 (BMGU and SPS as DERs)
and case 2 (PAFC and SPS as DERs) has been conducted.
The optimal power generations as computed by RVCA for
cases 1 and 2 are shown in Table III.
Table III shows the optimal power generations from the
BMGU and solar module as DG in case 1 and the same from
the fuel cell and SPS as DG in case 2. The optimal power
generations from BMGU are observed to be different for
different consumers. This is because the BMGU optimally
generates power depending on different load demands for
five different consumers. SPS mainly supplies optimal power
to every consumer during the day time. As the running cost
of the SPS system is nil, the average SPS capacity has been
optimally chosen to be more or less the same for both cases.
The difference between power demand and generation of power
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 29, NO. 1, JANUARY 2014
TABLE IV
COMPARISON OF TOTAL COST BETWEEN CASES 1 AND 2
TABLE V
PER UNIT COSTS FOR CONSUMERS (CASES 1 AND 2)
from the DERs defines the power deviation in both the cases
(cases 1 and 2). Positive power deviation indicates that less
power is generated with respect to the load demand, while
negative power deviation implies that more power is generated
with respect to the load demand. The powers generated from
BESS are decided on the basis of positive power deviations.
The power generation from BESS is low in case 1 from that
of case 2 due to the presence of BMGU as DG which is
found to be cheaper than PAFC beside BESS, powers are also
purchased from a conventional power grid to meet the peak
load demands. During dip load demand period, negative power
deviations arise which are used by selling the extra generated
power through contract with the conventional power grid. It
has been observed that the range of optimal power generation
from DERs generally varies with consumer load demands to
limit unnecessary power generation, and thus provides a cost
effective power delivery system. It can also be mentioned in
this context that, besides the economic factor, the decentralized
microgrid system also provides reliable power to the consumers
because of the appropriate back-up supply from BESS and
conventional power grid in case of positive power deviation,
including peak demand periods.
The computed total annual cost of a consumer-based micro-
grid power-delivery system for case 1 (with BMGU and SPS as
DERs) and case 2 (with PAFC and SPS as DERs) are shown in
Table IV.
The results of Table IV portray that the total annual cost re-
lating to microgrid operation using BMGU and SPS is 8.1% less
than that using solar and fuel cell for the same load demand.
Table V illustrates the per-unit energy cost calculated for each
consumer operating as a microgrid power system for cases 1 and
2.
It is observed that the per-unit cost for every consumer ob-
tained in case 1 is approximately 8.4% less than that obtained
in case 2.
It is worthwhile to compare the results of RVCA with an-
other well-established heuristic technique using the same input
SOM AND CHAKRABORTY: STUDIES ON ECONOMIC FEASIBILITY OF AN AUTONOMOUS POWER DELIVERY SYSTEM 179

TABLE VI consumers. The individual elements of the defined

COMPARISON OF TOTAL COST FOR CASE 1 AS COMPUTED BY RVCA AND GA matrices are represented as single matrix in terms
of cost. This is shown as

data. Here, the genetic algorithm (GA) has been chosen. The
implementational details of GA are presented in Appendix A. On the basis of this matrix, the best fitness value is
The total annual cost reported in Table VI reveals that for the calculated.
microgrid using solar and biomass as DERs (case 1), GA pre- Step 2) Evolutionary operations for each individual in the
dictions exceed the RVCA prediction by 1.22%. It can be noted population are carried out by the operations of selec-
here that, unlike hard computing techniques, different soft tion, crossover and mutation, which are described in
computing techniques can give marginally different optimal the following.
solutions. a) The mating pool is selected by Roulette-Wheel
selection operand, where the wheel is divided
into parts in proportion to the number of
VI. CONCLUSION variables, i.e., , , , and to get
the winning area. The probabilistically selected
Different sets of DERs connected to a microgrid framework formula is given in as
of an Indian power-delivery system have been theoretically
studied from an economic perspective using the method of
RVCA. RVCA, as a soft computing technique can take into
account imprecision, partial truth, uncertainty, and approxi-
mation in the input data such as load profiles, unlike linear
programming-based approaches [3], [12], to solve problems where is the probability of selecting winning
of a similar character. RVCA also avoids the potential pitfall area, is the functional value of th popula-
of premature convergence present in other differential evolu- tion, and is the divided number of parts of
tion technique. An economically superior result, leading to a the wheel in proportion to the number of vari-
reduction in annual cost by 8.1%, has been obtained for the ables.
microgrid power-delivery system when solar and BMGU act b) Probability distribution of generated children
as DERs than when fuel cell and solar acts as DER. Microgrid for contracting crossover and that for ex-
power-delivery systems consisting of economic and reliable panding crossover is used to calculate for
distributed power sources such as BMGU coupled with SPS in generating children solutions as given in [40].
a small Indian locality may be a worthwhile option to be pur- The terms and are given, respectively, as
sued in future power demand scenarios. Moreover, it is realized
RVCA can be successfully and reliably implemented in this
type of optimization problem instead of traditional method of
linear programming [12], and other conventional evolutionary
methods.

where the exponent is a non-negative

APPENDIX A real number and spread factor is a well-de-
STEPS OF THE GA fined constant. After calculating the terms
and , contracting crossover or ex-
The implementation logic of this evolutionary method is panding crossover is made under the
briefly described in the following steps. probability distribution curve, depending on a
Step 1) A population is created to initialize population. random number , as shown in the following
These population matrices pertain to the gen- two equations, respectively:
eration of power by DG, battery, purchasing
power, and selling power which are con-
sidered as ,
, if
, and
, respec-
tively. The matrices are varied for hours of power if
demand, with a population size of for different
180
Finally, children solutions are calculated on the
basis of two given equations
where and are the children solutions,
and and are the parent solutions.
c) Mutated solutions have been calculated from
the original ones as mentioned in [40] and are
given as
where and are the mu-
tated solution and original crossover solution,
respectively. The term in (22) is the max-
imum value of perturbation defined by the user.
The perturbation factor corresponding to
and the is generally calculated as
d) The newly produced individuals get checked
by satisfying all of the constraining factors at
the end of each generation.
Step 3) The fitness value is calculated after evaluating the
population set. This fitness value is now compared
with the previous fitness value of the initial popula-
tion set. The best fitness value is selected for cre-
ation of the next-generation population. The cor-
responding individuals relating to the best fitness
value are selected for the next iterations.
Step 4) The iteration procedure is continued until the ter-
mination condition. This is based on the tolerance
value which is considered as the negligible differ-
ence between the highest fitness values of consecu-
tive iterations.
APPENDIX B
ADDITIONAL DETAILS ON MICROGRID CONSTRUCTION
In this work, distributing cables have been considered for the
microgrid construction (the details of the ratings and other fi-
nancial considerations are discussed below and also reported
now in the revised manuscript). Further step-up and step-down
transformers are used at the generating and consumer ends. The
reason for the latter is that, without the transformers, an enor-
mous amount of Joule heating associated with the large current
flow in cables would have caused losses which, in turn, would
have lead to a high constructional price. Hence, with knowledge
from [39], the total cost of cables, i.e., covering all of the dis-
tances, becomes much more than the prices required for setting
up transformers.
The ratings of cable are estimated in consideration of load
required by consumers. On the basis of two levels of generating
voltage, i.e., 415 V from fuel cell or BESS or SPS or BMGU
and 11 KV from a conventional grid, two different ampere levels
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 29, NO. 1, JANUARY 2014
for the cables have been considered to avoid damage and power
interruption.
For small current values (i.e., as calculated for grid voltage
level) is about 180 amp, while that computed for DERs voltage
levels is about 1400 Amp.
The cost of cables in the Indian market [39] is taken as Rs
625/m and Rs 1555/m for two amp levels, respectively. The
numbers of step-up transformers are selected depending on the
number of DERs, while numbers of step-down transformers are
chosen on the basis of number of consumers. This is because the
voltage generated by each DER is enhanced to a voltage level to
upper grid, so that the decision of power purchase can be easily
made by the controller on the basis of load demand. Change-
over switches costing Rs 37 000 [39] are used for this purpose.
Circuit-breakers were used for selecting different DERs oper-
ating, having higher ampere ratings, worth Rs 4 Lakhs [39]. The
total prices (in Rs) for all of the CBs, transformers, and total dis-
tribution cable were mentioned in Table II.
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T. Som was born in Kharagpur, India, on October 8,
1982. She received the B.S. degree in electrical en-
gineering from the Institute of Technical Education
and Research, Utkal University, Bhubaneswar, India,
in 2005, and the M.S. degree in power engineering
from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India, in 2008.
At present, she is a Senior Research Fellow with
the Department of Power Engineering, Jadavpur Uni-
versity, Kolkata, India.
N. Chakraborty was born in Kolkata, India, on
August 27, 1964. He received the B.S. and M.S.
degrees from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India,
in 1986 and 1989, respectively, both in electrical
engineering, the Diploma from the Imperial College
(DIC), London, U.K., and the Ph.D. degree from the
University of London, London, U.K., in 1999.
He is a Professor with the Department of Power
Engineering, and was the former Dean, Faculty of
Engineering and Technology, Jadavpur University,
Kolkata, India. His fields of research interest include
power economics and deregulation, nonconventional generation and environ-
ment, novel materials, and applied superconductivity.