  The control and managing of power demand and supply become very crucial
because of penetration of renewables in the electricity networks and energy
demand increase in residential and commercial sectors. In this paper, a new
approach is presented to bridge the gap between Demand-Side Management (DSM)
and microgrid portfolio, sizing and placement optimization. Although DSM helps
energy consumers to take advantage of recent developments in utilization of
Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) especially microgrids, a huge need of
connecting DSM results to microgrid optimization is being felt. Consequently, a
novel model that integrates the DSM techniques and microgrid modules in a
two-layer configuration is proposed. In the first layer, DSM is employed to
minimize the electricity demand (e.g. heating and cooling loads) based on zone
temperature set-point. Using the optimal load profile obtained from the first
layer, all investment and operation costs of a microgrid are then optimized in
the second layer. The presented model is based on the existing optimization
platform developed by RU-LESS (Rutgers University, Laboratory for Energy Smart
Systems) team. As a demonstration, the developed model has been used to study
the impact of smart HVAC control on microgrid compared to traditional HVAC
control. The results show a noticeable reduction in total annual energy
consumption and annual cost of microgrid.
