Economic dispatch in microgrids using multi-agent system

In traditional bulk power system, economic dispatch is usually conducted in a central controller, which has access to global system information. However, characterized as flexible and “plug and play”, microgrids are often controlled in a distributed manner. This paper presents a decentralized architecture of multi-agent system for economic dispatch of distributed generators (DG) in microgrids. In this architecture, all DGs are equipped with identical agents, which can only perceive local information or obtain necessary information from their neighbors. By competing with each other, agents attempt to maximize their own profit, thereby tending to an optimal global solution. This paper first develops necessary conditions for minimal cost operation of microgrids. Then it proposes an innovative multi-agent communication algorithm to implement the minimal principle in multi-agent environment based on the consensus theorem. In the end, a five-agent system and a fifty-agent system are investigated to validate the proposed multi-agent algorithm.