Development of an optimization methodology for an industrial user in Smart Grid applications

The Thesis is composed of six chapters. The first chapter introduces the present energy framework, with an overview of the problems related to energy supply and climate change, thus providing the basic motivations for the research on Smart Grid topics. The second chapter presents a review of the state of the art regarding Smart Grid. First, the Smart Grid, Micro Grid, Virtual Power Plant and Smart User concepts are discussed, along with the proposed control strategies for the management of the grid, referring to the works presented by many authors in the literature. Then, the focus is moved to the optimization algorithms and their implementation in energy systems. The third chapter describes the Smart User plant in Pontlab, providing the specifications of each device that it includes and the thermal and electric layouts of choice among the possible alternatives. In addition, it treats the sizing of some components and the different approach required for their application within Smart Grids framework. The control algorithms are described in detail in the fourth chapter. The modeling of the system, the constraints set, the different techniques adopted and the benefits or downsides of each approach followed are discussed. The fifth chapter presents a detailed description of the input sets employed for the algorithm tests. The motivations behind each test performed are made clear in advance and then each valuable result is presented and discussed in respect to the goals set. Finally, the conclusions are drawn in the sixth chapter, along with a brief listing of the future developments of the project.