Assessment of the production costs curve in micro-grids: a comparative analysis

Abstract

In micro-grids, due to their small scale, there is commonly only one power supplier. A competitive wholesale market hardly exists so the question about how to consider market issues for small producers within micro-grids arises. On the other hand, the specific features of micro-grids where load and generated power hardly find a balance, require that customers take part to regulation issues, maybe using demand response programs. In this paper, price responsive policies and its programs are discussed to answer this question. A case study of a micro-grid with one microturbine and two photovoltaic generators in Italy is analyzed to assess the overall production cost in order to build a price responsive program in different cases while changing the grid’s characteristics.