Agent-Based Coordinated Control of Power Electronic Converters in a Microgrid

Maryam Nasri,Mehrdad Moallem,Herbert L Ginn

doi:10.3390/electronics10091031

Abstract

This paper presents the implementation of an agent-based architecture suitable for the coordination of power electronic converters in stand-alone microgrids. To this end, a publish-subscribe agent architecture was utilized as a distributed microgrid control platform. Over a distributed hash table (DHT) searching overlay, the publish-subscribe architecture was identified based on a numerical analysis as a scalable agent-based technology for the distributed real-time coordination of power converters in microgrids. The developed framework was set up to deploy power-sharing distributed optimization algorithms while keeping a deterministic time period of a few tens of milliseconds for a system with tens of converters and when multiple events might happen concurrently. Several agents participate in supervisory control to regulate optimum power-sharing for the converters. To test the design, a notional shipboard system, including several converters, was used as a case study. Results of implementing the agent-based publish-subscribe control system using the Java Agent Development Framework (JADE) are presented.

Highlights

Microgrids are groups of power energy sources, loads, storage systems, load controllers, and local networks that are created to provide an energy solution for a community and operated as an electrical island or connected to larger scale power grids [1]
Coordinating a power system requires directing the flow of power between its primary energy sources and loads through power electronic converters [2]
Considering that the number of active power electronic converters in a microgrid may change, the control topology needs to meet the up-limit time in the number of real-time message exchanges and disregard the number of converters operating at a given moment [8]

Summary

Introduction

Microgrids are groups of power energy sources, loads, storage systems, load controllers, and local networks that are created to provide an energy solution for a community and operated as an electrical island or connected to larger scale power grids [1]. Multi-agent control systems can provide higher degrees of reliability and efficiency of power generation and consumption in power systems, including distributed energy resources [22,23,24]. This is because they work inside a wholly distributed system, where each node can connect to other nodes at one or multiple layers [25]. In this work, considering the high level of flexibility, reliability, and extensibility, an agent-based control system is applied to coordinate power electronic converters in a stand-alone microgrid to control a cost function system level

Proposed Multi-Agent Control Architecture

An Optimal Sharing Algorithm to Deploy in the Proposed Publish-Subscribe MAS

Publish-Subscribe MAS for the Shipboard Microgrid

Conclusions

Findings