In spite of all advantages of solar energy, its deployment will significantlychange the typical electric load profile, thus necessitating a change intraditional distribution grid management practices. In particular, the net loadramping, created as a result of simultaneous solar generation drop and loadincrease at early evening hours, is one of the major operational issues thatneeds to be carefully addressed. In this paper, microgrids are utilized tooffer a viable and localized solution to this challenge while removing the needfor costly investments by the electric utility. In this regard, first themicrogrid ramping capability is determined via a min-max optimization, andsecond, the microgrid optimal scheduling model is developed to coordinate themicrogrid net load with the distribution grid net load for addressing theramping issue. Numerical simulations on a test distribution feeder with onemicrogrid exhibit the effectiveness of the proposed model.
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