Smart consumers and prosumers play a key role in the modern power and energy systems; due to significant share of self-consumption, they may reduce the burden on local distribution systems or microgrids; moreover, as a large share of their demand is supplied by their own renewable energy resources, they considerably contribute to the decarbonization targets. Identifying the impact of smart prosumers on microgrids may assist decision makers to find the challenges and make suitable changes. The operation of reconfigurable microgrids with high penetration of green smart homes (SHs), charging stations (CSs) and hydrogen fueling stations (HFSs) has not been addressed in the literature, so, this paper aims to propose a framework for energy management in the mentioned smart consumers/prosumers and investigate their impact on host microgrids. In the proposed framework, firstly, all electric vehicles (EVs) and fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) optimize their own charging schedule using the price signals received through vehicle-to-infrastructure technology; in the second level, each HFS, CS or SH solves its own energy management model and in the third level, the operator of the microgrid solves its day-ahead operational planning model. The solvers of General Algebraic modeling Systems (GAMS) are used to solve all the mentioned models. The results confirm the efficiency of the developed multi-level methodology; according to the results, the studied microgrid enjoys a daily profit of $571.47, meaning that the revenue, earned by selling electricity to CSs, SHs, HFSs and its own demands is considerably higher than sum of the cost of its micro-turbines and the cost of purchased electricity from upstream grid. The results indicate that the batteries decrease the daily cost of smart homes by 4 %; moreover, the results suggest that batteries cause drastic change in operation cost of the microgrid.

Ocean thermal and power energy systems are promising driving forces for seashore coastal communities to achieve net-zero energy/emission target, whereas energy planning and management on ocean thermal/power and distributed building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) systems are critical, in terms of serving scale sizing and planning on geographical locations of district building community, and cycling aging of battery storages. However, the current literature provides insufficient studies on this topic. This study aims to address this research gap by transforming towards zero-energy coastal communities from the district level in subtropical regions, including centralised seawater-based chiller systems, distributed BIPVs and coastal oscillating water column technologies, as well as multi-directional Vehicle-to-Building energy interaction paradigms. Advanced energy management strategies were explored to enhance renewable penetration, import cost-saving, and deceleration of battery cycling aging, in response to relative renewable-to-demand difference, off-peak grid information with low price, and real-time battery cycling aging. Furthermore, in accordance with the power generation characteristic of two wave stations (i.e., Kau Yi Chau (KYC) and West Lamma Channel (WLC)) in Hong Kong, energy system planning and structural configurations of the coastal community were proposed and comparatively studied for the multi-criteria performance improvement. Research results showed that, compared to an air-cooled chiller, the water-cooled chiller with a much higher Coefficient of Performance (COP) will reduce the energy consumption of cooling systems, leading to a decrease in total electric demand from 134 to 126.5 kWh/m²·a. The scale for the net-zero energy district community with distributed BIPVs and oscillating water column was identified as 5 high-rise office buildings, 5 high-rise hotel buildings, 150 private cars and 120 public shuttle buses. Furthermore, the geographical location planning scheme on the Case 1 (office buildings close to KYC, and hotel buildings close to WLC) was identified as the most economically and environmentally feasible scheme, whereas the Case 3 (only office buildings are planned close to all power supply with oscillating water column) showed the highest flexibility in grid electricity shifting, together with the highest value of equivalent battery relative capacity. This study demonstrates techno-economic performances and energy flexibility of frontier ocean energy technologies in a coastal community under advanced energy management strategies, together with technical guidance for serving scale sizing and planning on geographical locations. The research results highlight the prospects and promote frontier ocean energy techniques in subtropical coastal regions.