# Research on Optimized Energy Scheduling of Rural Microgrid
## 1 Introduction  
A smart grid is a highly integrated power system with information technology and physical grid [1]. Demand-side management (DSM), energy generation and energy storage are considered the main promoters of smart grid deployment [2]. In the past, large commercial and industrial customers have been known as the active participants in DSM and demand-response (DR) programs because of their potential to achieve large peak-load and energy consumption reduction [3]. However, this ignores the potential value of residential and agricultural users. These small consumers are numerous [4], especially in remote rural areas. There are more than one billion people worldwide living in rural areas, and some are facing severe energy shortages [5]. This makes the need to solve the energy management problem in rural areas urgent. As an important part of the smart grid, a microgrid can effectively solve the problem of power supply in remote areas and has broad application prospects in rural areas. Therefore, it is important and necessary to explore the energy demand of rural microgrids and precisely schedule the limited energy. All these factors will imply more specific requirements for optimal energy dispatching of rural microgrid with resource shortage [6]. Microgrids are promoted as a potential technology for electricity provision to rural communities. The primary objective for scaling up or introducing a microgrid for a rural community lies in theprovision of \"basic electricity access by identifying necessary electrical appliances\" aimed at overall social well-being [7]. At present, research on the rural microgrid mainly focuses on regional energy management [8], rural-electrification technology [9; 10], and rural building energy conservation [11; 12]. Among them, energy has always been an important development parameter for rural microgrids. A large number of studies have contributed to alleviating the energy shortage of rural microgrids, and [13] presents an energy-management system (EMS) for an isolated rural microgrid; [14] proposes a novel framework that includes techno-financial analysis of the energy system for designing a rural sustainable microgrid; [15] creates a comprehensive model to investigate the optimal management of a rural microgrid infrastructure; [16] presents a novel mixed-integer linear optimization model and considers the security-constrained of microgrid; and [17] presents the current socio-economic status of a rural community fulfilling its electrical need from the rural microgrid. In rural areas where energy is scarce, microgrids can provide consistent, reliable electricity to rural communities [18]. However, when optimizing the energy management of a rural microgrid, the actual load data or typical load data is usually used as input, which may reduce the practicality and feasibility of the energy-management strategy. Meanwhile, they also take the total rural load consumption as a unified variable, which lacks the consideration of load characteristics in rural areas. In addition, the energy-storage system (ESS) can also make a significant contribution to energy development in rural areas. With the reduction of renewable energy generation costs and the improvement of energy-storage technology, an ESS plays an important role in stabilizing the intermittent of renewable energy generation and ensuring the reliability of microgrid energy dispatching [19; 20; 21], and the reasonable configuration of ESS can improve the economy of the microgrid [22]. An improved distributed energy-storage model is proposed by [23] to maintain the frequency stability and supply-demand balance of a microgrid; and [24] utilizes the optimal capacity of ESS in hybrid power systems to minimize costs. Although the impact of energy-storage capacity on the scheduling strategy is significant, the energy-storage capacity cannot be adjusted frequently in practical applications.