Recently, large-scale renewable energy resources have been widely integrated into power systems. To optimize large-scale integration of these resources and improve the operation performance of the distribution system, this paper proposes a novel dynamic energy management strategy with the cooperative interaction of an energy system: a multi-grid connected microgrids (MGs)-based active distribution system (ADS). A bi-level multi-objective optimization problem of the strategy is formulated with the active distribution network (ADN) in the upper level and MGs in the lower level. The interaction can be classified into two categories: the one between MGs and the ADN and the other one among MGs. The former is described by bi-level programming; the latter is innovatively explained by an interactive energy game matrix (IEGM) defined in this paper. The concept of the expanded energy storage system is defined and applied to the IEGM for the optimal operation of ADSs. The optimal operation includes improved technical performances in terms of power quality, energy utilization, adaptability and autonomy. The optimization problem is solved with a hybrid algorithm of Rough Set Theory-Hierarchical Genetic Algorithm-NSGA-II. Case studies of an ADS with different MGs and a real system would validate the efficiency of the proposed methodology. Results show that the proposed EM strategy can accurately quantify and guide the energy interaction among MGs and that between MGs and the ADN. Moreover, those technical performances of the ADS are improved. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.