Collaborative Low-Carbon Scheduling Strategy for Microgrid Groups Based on Green Certificate Incentives and Energy Demand Response

The multi-microgrid integrated energy system (MM-IES) plays a vital role in enhancing energy utilization efficiency and promoting the coordinated consumption of renewable energy. However, the realization of low-carbon dispatch in MM-IES is hindered by multi-energy coupling and the need for distributed coordination under increasingly stringent carbon emission constraints. To address these issues, a distributed scheduling strategy that integrates demand response and green certificate trading mechanisms is proposed. Firstly, a low-carbon integrated energy microgrid (IEM) model integrating carbon capture and storage (CCS) and power-to-gas (P2G) technologies is proposed to improve the system’s low-carbon regulation capability and mitigate the impact of multi-energy coupling in MM-IES. This integration enhances the system’s low-carbon regulation capability. Secondly, to incentivize user participation in system optimization, a demand response mechanism and a tiered green certificate trading model are introduced. On this basis, an MM-IES low-carbon economic dispatch model is established with the goal of minimizing total operating costs, carbon trading costs, and green certificate trading costs. To further protect the privacy of each microgrid and achieve efficient coordination, distributed algorithms are used to solve the model. This method only requires exchanging boundary information to achieve collaborative optimization between microgrids. Finally, the simulation results indicate that the proposed strategy can effectively reduce system operating costs and carbon emissions. Furthermore, the effectiveness of demand response and green certificate trading in promoting low-carbon economic operation of multi microgrid systems is verified.