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Decentralized Multi-Period Economic Dispatch for Real-Time Flexible Demand Management | IEEE Journals & Magazine | IEEE Xplore

Decentralized Multi-Period Economic Dispatch for Real-Time Flexible Demand Management

Publisher: IEEE

Abstract:

Emerging smart-grid-enabling technologies will allow an unprecedented degree of observability and control at all levels in a power system. Combined with flexible demand a...View more

Abstract:

Emerging smart-grid-enabling technologies will allow an unprecedented degree of observability and control at all levels in a power system. Combined with flexible demand and storage, they could allow procuring energy at minimum cost and environmental impact. That however presupposes real-time coordination of demand of individual households and industries down at the distribution level, with generation at the transmission level. This is closely related with the balancing market economic dispatch (ED) problem, which currently does not take into account distribution network constraints and flexible demand characteristics. Still, assuming a suitably modified form of that problem was available, due to both computational and communications requirements, its centralized solution in its full detail would not be tractable. While there is currently a wealth of literature dealing with distributed optimization applications in power systems, it typically focuses on smaller parts of the overall energy management problem (e.g., transmission area synchronization or electric vehicles management) often without considering its full scale or establishing any association with energy market mechanisms. The target of this paper is twofold: 1) identify a flexible demand and distribution network inclusive formulation for ED and 2) propose a solution method.
Published in: IEEE Transactions on Power Systems ( Volume: 31, Issue: 1, January 2016)
Page(s): 672 - 684
Date of Publication: 20 February 2015

ISSN Information:

Publisher: IEEE

I. Introduction

The economic dispatch is the basic mechanism used to determine close to real-time the operating set-points of all controllable devices connected in the power system in an economically efficient way. In its traditional form, it largely involves committed conventional generators, known renewable generation and demand, and could well be approximated by a deterministic problem typically covering a short period in time. However this changes when deferrable demand is taken into consideration, as the utility gained by a unit of energy purchased by an electric vehicle (EV) or storage unit now depends on the price of energy in the future, which is typically determined by the large generating units located at the transmission level. While currently some system operators use economic dispatch mechanisms that look up to 2 h ahead [1], this is probably not an adequate period of time to schedule an EV or a storage device. As [2] has shown, insufficient coordination between demand shifting decisions and generation scheduling can result in increased energy price volatility. In addition, the increased flexible demand (mainly in the form of EVs) will put considerable strain on existing power distribution infrastructure. Consequently the balancing market should not only determine the price and optimal amount of energy trades for the current time-step (as it currently does) but also provide a good indication of the demand shifting impact on the value of energy in the near future. Furthermore, it would have to incorporate the constraints and peculiarities of distribution networks. Overall the structure of the traditional ED problem has to change. Naturally two fundamental questions come up: what is the formulation and how could it be solved.

References

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