Synthesis of Solar Production and Energy Demand Profiles Using Markov Chains for Microgrid Design

Abstract

Uncertainties related to the energy produced and consumed in smart grids, especially in microgrids, are among the major issues for both their design and optimal management. In that context, it is essential to have representative probabilistic scenarios of these environmental uncertainties. The intensive development and massive installation of smart meters will help to better characterize local energy consumption and production in the following years. However, models representing these variables over large timescales are essential for microgrid design. In this paper, we explore a simple method based on Markov chains capable of generating a large number of probabilistic production or consumption profiles from available historical measurements. We show that the developed approach can capture the main characteristics and statistical variability of real data on both short-term and long-term scales. Moreover, the correlation between both production and demand is conserved in generated profiles with respect to historical measurements.

Keywords

• microgrids
• uncertainties
• integrated design
• stochastic modeling
• Markov chains
• energy demand