  Distributed renewable energy resources have attracted significant attention
in recent years due to the falling cost of the renewable energy technology,
extensive federal and state incentives, and the application in improving
load-point reliability. This growing proliferation, however, is changing the
traditional consumption load curves by adding considerable levels of
variability and further challenging the electricity supply-demand balance. In
this paper, the application of microgrids in effectively capturing the
distribution network net load variability, caused primarily by the prosumers,
is investigated. Microgrids provide a viable and localized solution to this
challenge while removing the need for costly investments by the electric
utility on reinforcing the existing electricity infrastructure. A
flexibility-oriented microgrid optimal scheduling model is proposed and
developed to coordinate the microgrid net load with the aggregated
consumers/prosumers net load in the distribution network with a focus on
ramping issues. The proposed coordination is performed to capture both
inter-hour and intra-hour net load variabilities. Numerical simulations on a
test distribution feeder with one microgrid and several consumers and prosumers
exhibit the effectiveness of the proposed model.
