A Multi-objective Microgrid Assessment and Sizing Framework for Economic and Resilience Benefits

This paper presents an innovative multi-objective assessment and sizing framework for battery energy storage systems paired with photovoltaics for a cost-effective and resilient microgrid. In the proposed framework, we simultaneously consider i) economic benefits from bundling grid services in grid-connected mode and ii) enhanced resilience by operating the microgrid in island mode upon outages of the main grid. We first develop a survivability evaluation method to quantify the resilience of a microgrid. Next, with resilience and economic benefits being formulated as two separate objectives, we develop a multiobjective optimization to explore different sizing and dispatch options and generate Pareto efficient solutions to assist decisionmaking in system design. Case studies on a real-world microgrid project in the Puget Sound Energy’s system are presented to illustrate the proposed modeling and sizing methods.