Decentralized Control of the Power Flows in a Network of Smart Microgrids Modeled as a Team of Cooperative Agents

The focus of this paper is on the decentralized control of smart microgrids (SMGs), where each microgrid is modeled as an inventory system locally producing energy by wind/solar sources. The objective is to satisfy the internal demand, and to exchange power with its local energy storage technology, the main grid, and other similar microgrids of the region. The problem faced, within this context, is the optimization (minimization) of the costs of energy storage and power exchanged among SMGs. A decentralized control strategy is proposed, which allows the storage level in each microgrid to operate around a reference value by cooperatively sharing power between microgrids. A distributed control approach is presented where different agents, one for each microgrid and one for each power line, agree on a saddle point of a local function. The approach is based on the classical work of Arrow on convex optimization, which has seen renewed interest with its recent application to team theory and in its connection with the decomposition of feedback systems. An example is illustrated to show the practical use and the limitations of the method.