Distributed Online Optimal Energy Management for Smart Grids

Traditionally, economic dispatch and demand response (DR) are considered separately, or implemented sequentially, which may degrade the energy efficiency of the power grids. One important goal of optimal energy management (OEM) is to maximize the social welfare through the coordination of the suppliers' generations and customers' demands. Thus, it is desirable to consider the interactive operation of economic dispatch and DR, and solve them in an integrated way. This paper proposes a fully distributed online OEM solution for smart grids. The proposed solution considers the economic dispatch of conventional generators, DR of users, and operating conditions of renewable generators all together. The proposed distributed solution is developed based on a market-based self-interests motivation model since this model can realize the global social welfare maximization among system participants. The proposed solution can be implemented with multiagent system with each system participant assigned with an energy management agent. Based on the designed distributed algorithms for price updating and supply-demand mismatch discovery, the OEM among agents can be achieved in a distributed way. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed solution.