A Novel Component Sizing Procedure in Off-Grid Networked Microgrids

Stand-alone Microgrids (MGs) can effectively be utilized to provide the energy demand for different purposes, such as reducing the burden of the main grid. Paying attention to harvesting renewable energies in MGs resulted in coming up with networked MG (NMG) in recent years. Unlike individual MGs, there is no prominent study on component sizing in NMG. In this paper, a novel component sizing procedure is proposed for NMG. The proposed procedure is based on the optimal operation of each individual MGs. The proposed reduced factor (RF) determines the size reduction of each component in NMG. In order to validate the proposed method, the NMG's operation is evaluated according to the calculated component's size. The results show, in NMG, the capital cost can reduce significantly due to the possibility of power-sharing amongst MGs.