A Multiagent-Based Hybrid Power Control and Management of Distributed Power Sources

Abstract

In this paper, a multi-agent control system for DC-coupled photovoltaic (PV), fuel cell (FC), ultracapacitor(UC) and battery hybrid power system is studied for commercial buildings & apartment buildings microgrid. In this proposed system, the PV system provides electric energy to the electrolyzer to produce hydrogen for future use and transfer to the load side, if possible. Whenever the PV system cannot completely meet load demands, the FC system provides power to meet the remaining load. A multi-agent system based-power management and control algorithm is proposed for the hybrid power system by taking into account the characteristics of each power source. The main works of this paper are hybridization of alternate energy sources with FC systems using long and short storage strategies to build the multi-agent control system with pragmatic design, and a dynamic model proposed for a PV/FC/UC/battery bank hybrid power generation system. A dynamic simulation model for the hybrid power system has been developed using Matlab/Simulink, SimPowerSystems and Stateflow. Simulation results are also presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed multi-agent control and management system for building microgrid.