Microgrids are key components of future smart grids, which integrate distributed renewable energy generators to efficiently serve the load locally. However, the intermittent nature of renewable energy generations hinders the reliable operation of microgrids. Besides the commonly adopted methods such as deploying energy storage system (ESS) and supplementary fuel generator to address the intermittency issue, energy cooperation among microgrids by enabling their energy exchange for sharing is an appealing new solution. In this paper, we consider the energy management problem for two cooperative microgrids each with individual renewable energy generator and ESS. First, by assuming that the microgrids' renewable energy generation/load amounts are perfectly known ahead of time, we solve the off-line energy management problem optimally. Based on the obtained solution, we study the impacts of microgrids' energy cooperation and their ESSs on the total energy cost. Next, inspired by the off-line optimization solution, we propose online algorithms for the real-time energy management of the two cooperative microgrids. It is shown via simulations that the proposed online algorithms perform well in practice, have low complexity, and are also valid under arbitrary realizations of renewable energy generations/loads. Finally, we present one method to extend our proposed online algorithms to the general case of more than two microgrids based on a clustering approach.
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