A Review on Smart Energy Management Systems in Microgrids Based on Power Generating and Environmental Costs

Abstract

Humanity is leaving an age behind which could be summarized as the industrialization of nations based on fossil fuels i.e. conventional energy resources which have also brought an environmental burden along with themselves. While the world leadership has been arguing about the emission rights and seemingly reaching a non-consensus, economies have been hit by an unexpected pandemic and this global health crisis which has deep environmental roots has alerted decision-makers once more that the already dying fossil energy resources has to be quickly replaced by their environmentally sustainable counterparts: renewable energy systems. As a general term, renewable energy systems may refer to many systems of different compositions and scales which can produce and dispatch power from renewable energy resources. In order to be in a state of full preparedness for a future without fossil fuels, human civilization needs a better understanding of how renewable systems work and how they can be operated and maintained more effectively and efficiently. In order to achieve this multi-paradigm and interdisciplinary challenge, more powerful and robust approaches are needed. In this paper, we have investigated the most obvious cases of renewable energy installations which are usually classified under the category of Microgrids, and the management systems they rely on called “smart energy management systems” (SEMS). The approach exploited here, can be summarized as finding a common ground for comparing computational frameworks employed within these systems and determining the advantages of SEMS which can operate effectively and efficiently in the context of power generating cost and environmental cost. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021, corrected publication 2021.