Agent-aggregator platform and its distributed algorithm

The activities of the INCREASE project are focused on intelligent ways to manage distributed renewable energy sources (DRES) in low-voltage (LV) and medium-voltage (MV) networks.INCREASE aims at providing solutions to overcome technical issues during power system operation, by employing advanced technological solutions and intelligent control strategies. Apart from the technological solutions based on inverter-interfaced RES, the project’s activities include the development of a hierarchical intelligent multi-agent-based control strategy, its structure and its algorithms.Development of overlaying control This report describes in detail an agent-aggregator structure, which aims to exploit flexibility from end users toward relevant stakeholders. Under the scope of INCREASE, this concept will be used to cope with certain network issues including unacceptable voltage variations. The so-called overlaying control is a set of control mechanisms based on the agent-based technology that has been developed for the purpose of voltage regulation as well as congestion management. The first control mechanism is a fair power sharing control that can be complementary for the local inverter-based solutions in term of fairness for end users. The second control mechanism aims to coordinate the operation of an OLTC of the MV/LV transformer with power curtailment of DRES inverter to cope with voltage violations. The final control mechanism is used for congestion management of the MV/LV transformer. Integration with local control To ensure robustness and stability of the system, an investigation of integrating the local control and the overlaying control for DRES’ inverters is conducted. A working principal has been developed to allow the overlaying control following up the local control in case of unfair power curtailment occurring. This principal has been verified using a co-simulation based agent-aggregator platform. Development of scheduling control Apart from the overlaying control, the agent-aggregator structure offers a preventive approach to schedule flexibility of new forms of energy consumption in advance. By using forecasting as well as demand side management modules, the DSO can prevent possible network issues and make use of these scheduling means to procure flexibility from the end users. The conceptual design of this process will be introduced in Chapter 7 of the report.