Basic concept and decentralized autonomous control of super-distributed energy systems

New small-scale dispersed generation systems, such as fuel cells and micro gas turbines, have made remarkable advances lately and they will be applied practically in the near future. Although a large number of researches on the introduction of small-scale dispersed generation systems have been carried out, only a small number of small-scale dispersed generation systems are considered in these researches. Therefore, little is known about problems to be solved when a large number of small-scale dispersed generation systems are introduced into electric power systems. This paper deals with a super-distributed energy system that consists of a great number of dispersed generation systems such as fuel cells, micro gas turbines, and so on. The behavior of a customer with a dispersed generation system is simulated as the Ising model in statistical mechanics. The necessity of a distribution network in super-distributed energy systems is discussed based on the Ising model. The feasibility of decentralized autonomous control using vicinity information is also investigated on the basis of stability analysis of the Hopfield neural network model. (C) 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.