While price schedules can help improve the economic efficiency of renewable energy-powered microgrids

time-of-use (TOU) pricing has been identified as an effective way for microgrid development

which is presently limited by its high costs. In this study

we propose an evolutionary game theoretic model to explore optimal TOU pricing for development of renewable energy-powered microgrids by applying a multi-agent system

that comprises a government agent

local utility company agent

and different types of consumer agents. In the proposed model

we design objective functions for the company and the consumers and obtain a Nash equilibrium using backward induction. Two pricing strategies

namely

the TOU seasonal pricing and TOU monthly pricing

are evaluated and compared with traditional fixed pricing. The numerical results demonstrate that TOU schedules have significant potential for development of renewable energy-powered microgrids and are recommended for an electric company to replace traditional fixed pricing. Additionally

TOU monthly pricing is more suitable than TOU seasonal pricing for microgrid development.