Toward energy-efficient microgrids under summer peak electrical demand integrating solar dish Stirling heat engine and diesel unit

The environmental air pollution according to greenhouse gas emissions and significant demand for electrical energy and water due to the growing population of the world can be mentioned as main challenges all around the world. The current study proposes a new structure for energy-efficient microgrids to deal with on-peak electrical energy load in summer days. Two ancillary services are considered in the proposed structure including solar Stirling engine and diesel plant for decreasing the successive outages of interconnected energy network in extremely-hot weather status and eliminating massive blackouts. Such services are effective solutions to provide load and minimize the whole energy procurement cost as production-side management strategies. The objective of the proposed model is to minimize the fuel cost of the diesel plant and the cost of generated electricity by the local power network considering technical limitations of the combined diesel-Stirling electricity supply system. The optimal employment of solar-based Stirling cycle and diesel engine in providing summer peak power load are evaluated in terms of economic-environmental aspects by applying the model on a test case microgrid, which verifies high performance of the model.