Journal of Green Energy Research and Innovation
Quarterly

Integrated Analysis of Electrical and Thermal Energy Distribution in Smart Homes Connected to Microgrids with CHP Sources

Document Type : Research article

Authors

Arash Karami 1
Fardad Rastgou 1
Saman Hosseini-Hemati 1
Saeed Kharrati 1
Maryam Shirzadian Gilan 2

1 Department of Electrical Engineering, Ker.C., Islamic Azad University, Kermanshah, Iran

2 Department of Electrical Engineering, Kermanshah University of Technology, Kermanshah, Iran

10.61882/jgeri.3.2.65
Abstract
This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the joint distribution of electrical and thermal ‎energy in a smart home connected to a microgrid integrating renewable resources, combined heat and ‎power (CHP) units, and storage systems. While most existing studies have primarily focused on ‎generation planning and storage management, fewer works have examined the simultaneous ‎optimization of electricity and heat flows in residential environments. To address this gap, a mixed-‎integer linear programming (MILP) model is developed to schedule household appliances and manage ‎load shifting according to time-varying electricity prices, heating demand, and demand profiles, and the ‎optimization is solved using MATLAB tools. The proposed framework is applied to a residential ‎complex of 10 and 20 households under different CHP capacities and demand scenarios. Simulation ‎results reveal that increasing CHP capacity from 5 kW to 20 kW significantly improves the coordination ‎of electrical and thermal distribution, reduces reliance on the main grid, and lowers boiler operation, ‎thereby enhancing overall efficiency. Additional analyses with different numbers of households confirm ‎the scalability of the model, ensuring stable performance under varying load levels. A comparative ‎scenario without microgrid integration further highlights the substantial benefits of the proposed ‎system in reducing operational costs and improving resilience. To address this gap, a unified MILP ‎jointly schedules electrical–thermal resources (CHP, renewables, and dual electrical/thermal storage) ‎and employs a price–energy iterative scheme with explicit fairness constraints, ensuring no household is ‎worse off than in non-cooperative operation. These results demonstrate that the coordinated ‎consideration of both power and heat flows provides a more holistic strategy for smart home energy ‎management than electricity-only approaches. In 24-h studies, increasing installed CHP capacity from 5 ‎to 100 kW reduced total operating cost from $379.68 to $191.52 (≈49.6%). By integrating demand ‎response (DR) programs with CHP and renewable resources, the proposed method reduces energy costs, ‎strengthens supply security, and contributes to the sustainability of residential microgrids.‎

Highlights

❖ Comprehensive analysis of electrical and thermal energy in smart homes.
❖ Developed a MILP model for scheduling appliances and load shifting.
❖ Increasing CHP capacity significantly enhances energy distribution efficiency.
❖ Integrated approach reduces costs and strengthens supply security in microgrids. 

Keywords

Demand response
Energy management
Microgrid
Optimization
Smart home

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper. The ethical issues, including plagiarism, informed consent, misconduct, data fabrication and/or falsification, double publication and/or submission, redundancy, have been completely observed by the authors.

Credit Authorship Contribution Statement

Arash Karami: Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Methodology, Project administration, SoftwareValidation, Writing-review & editing. Fardad Rastgou:  Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Software, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Roles/Writing-original draft, Writing-review & editing. Saman Hosseini-Hemati:  Data curation, Methodology, Roles/Writing-original draft.‎ Saeed Kharrazi:  Data curation, MethodologyRoles/Writing-original draft. Maryam Shirzadian Gilan:  Data curation, Methodology, Roles/Writing-original draft.


Bibliography

Arash Karami received the B.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from the Ilam University, Ilam, in 2018, the M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from the Islamic Azad University, Ilam branch, Ilam, Iran, in 2020, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Islamic Azad University, Kermanshah branch, Kermanshah, in 2026. He currently teaches at the Iran National University of Skills. His research interests include renewable energy resources and power system analysis and power electronic systems.

Fardad Rastgou holds a Bachelor's, Master's, and Ph.D. degree in Power Electrical Engineering. He completed his Bachelor's degree at Tabriz University and went on to earn both his Master's and Ph.D. degrees with honors from Kurdistan University in Sanandaj. Dr. Rastgou has a keen interest in power system planning, bi-level planning, and renewable resource planning. His academic journey reflects a strong commitment to advancing the field of electrical engineering, particularly in optimizing power systems for sustainability and efficiency.

Saman Hosseini-Hemati Assistant Professor and Electrical Engineer with over 12 years of combined experience in power systems engineering, academic teaching, and research. Skilled in power system analysis, MV/HV design, and grid integration. Experienced in teaching, supervising students, and leading research in smart grids and renewable energy.

Saeed Kharrazi was born in Behbahan. He earned his bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees from Sharif University of Technology, Iran. His field of interest is power grid management and planning.

Maryam Shirzadian Gilan received the B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering in 2010 in Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran and M.Sc. of Electrical Engineering in 2013 in Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran, and PhD in Electrical Engineering in 2019 in Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran. She is now an Assistant Professor in Electrical Engineering in Kermanshah University of Technology, Kermanshah, Iran. Her research interests include Antennas, Electromagnetics, Optimization, Microwave devices, Radar, wave propagation and so on.

Citation
A. Karami, F. Rastgou, S. Hosseini-Hemati, S. Kharrati, and M. Shirzadian Gilan, "Integrated Analysis of Electrical and Thermal Energy Distribution in Smart Homes Connected to Microgrids with CHP Sources," Journal of Green Energy Research and Innovation, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 65-77, 2026.

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Journal of Green Energy Research and Innovation
Volume 3, Issue 2
Spring 2026
Pages 65-77

  • Receive Date 07 October 2025
  • Revise Date 29 November 2025
  • Accept Date 07 December 2025
  • Publish Date 01 June 2026

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