Distributed Optimal Economic Dispatch for Microgrids Considering Communication Delays

This paper investigates the economic dispatch problem of microgrids in a distributed fashion. To address this issue, a delay-free-based distributed algorithm is presented to optimally assign the whole energy demand among local generation units with the objective of minimizing the agminated operation cost. By implementing the proposed algorithm, each component can find its own optimal operations by only requiring local computation and communication. As a result, it enhances the system robustness, flexibility, privacy, etc. More importantly, the time-varying delays model is considered and embedded into the design of our distributed algorithm, such that the components can employ the delays information to achieve the collaborative operation, which are more general and applicable for practical power systems. In addition, we have proved that the proposed algorithm can converge to the global optimal point under some sufficient conditions. Finally, several simulations are provided to demonstrate the correctness and effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.