Distributed Load Sharing of an Inverter-Based Microgrid With Reduced Communication

Abstract

This paper presents a fully distributed power sharing control strategy for a microgrid with integration of multiple inverter-based intermittent distributed generators (IDGs) using a need-based aperiodic data transmission scheme. The control objective is to maintain the supply-demand balance of active power. According to the proposed control strategy, each bus in a microgrid has an associated bus agent. First, it is shown that by controlling the utilization levels of IDGs to a common value, which can be calculated using the total available power and total demands, the supply-demand balance can be maintained. Subsequently, we propose a multiagent system (MAS)-based discovery algorithm to discover the global microgrid information. Compared with most existing MAS-based load sharing studies, the proposed algorithm is capable of reducing data communication requirements since the agent only broadcasts its state to its neighbors when an event occurs. Furthermore, the distances between neighbor agents have been considered in the threshold of event condition to improve its efficiency in reducing data communication. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed scheme is validated on the Canadian urban distribution system.