Multiagent Voltage Control System in Mains with Small-Scale Distributed Generation Plants

Abstract

In order to develop contemporary power engineering, increase the reliability of consumers power supply, distributed generation (DG) plants shall be used, including those operating on renewable energy sources. To ensure optimal control of a large number of DG plants, a large data amount shall be transferred to the control center, i.e. the existing centralized control system, in this case, may turn out ineffective. To increase the efficiency of DG plants control, local control can be used with the coordination of control systems actions of other objects. This approach can be implemented using multiagent technologies. The purpose of this study is to implement a multiagent voltage regulation system in an electrical network with small DG plants and test its effectiveness. The model of the proposed multiagent voltage regulation system is implemented in the MATLAB programming and simulation environment. The system consists of a set of soft-ware agents, each of which is responsible for a separate control object as part of the general purpose mains. The electrical network under study consists of DC and AC sections. To test the effectiveness of the proposed multiagent voltage regulation system, short-circuit tests were carried out in the DC and AC sections, as well as experiments on connecting and disconnecting a powerful load. Based on the simulation results, it can be concluded that the multiagent system is effective in comparison with independent local voltage control in the electrical network with DG plants.