Impact assessment of microgrid implementation considering complementary building operation: An Ontario, Canada case

Abstract This case study presents the energy, emissions, and operating cost advantages and consequences of microgrid implementation. The buildings system considered in this study consists of commercial and residential components and exhibits complementary building use behavior between these two building types. This study investigates the advantages provided to the overall system by operating the buildings as a cluster in a microgrid as compared to standalone operation for each building unit. Variety of distributed electricity generation technologies were implemented and modelled to evaluate the behaviors of photovoltaic generation and seasonal micro co-generation of heat and power in each operational configuration. The results show that the buildings system was able to manage its distributed electricity generation and storage resources to meet the total system demand as a microgrid. This was achieved through the sharing of local energy generation and storage resources, which provided improved load-balancing and more efficient utilization of storage capacities within the buildings system. From the energy assessment, implementation of the microgrid configuration resulted in a reduction in total required storage capacity of up to 6.7% while also reducing consumption of grid electricity by up to 13.8%, as compared to standalone operation. Meanwhile, the emissions and operating costs assessments showed that, under scenarios with a high level of photovoltaic generation potential and seasonal micro-cogeneration of heat and power operation, a microgrid configuration reduces annual emission and operating costs by up to 1.29% and 61.2%, respectively.