Explicit price method for coordinated control and hydro-power production example

Abstract

In the context of a general renewed interest in decomposition-coordination control approaches, and in the more particular continuity of former studies of the authors in that respect, the present paper focuses on some so-called price coordination method based on distributed receding horizon controllers, here emphasizing possible explicit schemes both at the controllers level and at the coordinator level. This can clearly be of interest for the control of large scale systems as they arise in power management issues, and is illustrated with an example of hydro-power application. In short, the coordinator computes a price vector and distributes it to the various subsystems composing the overall system to be controlled, on the basis of the predicted control strategies that each of them communicate to it. The main point is that the coordinator here takes advantage of the explicit solutions for local linear Receding Horizon Controls, to globally update those price values in an explicit way as well. This method is illustrated with simulations of an industrial Hydro-Power Valley case-study, using real-data from French main electricity provider EDF (Electricité de France), and a comparison with the more classical coordination scheme based on a gradient algorithm is presented.