An Affine-Arithmetic-Based Consensus Protocol for Smart-Grid Computing in the Presence of Data Uncertainties

The recent advances in cooperative and bio-inspired computing based on self-organizing sensor networks have been recognized as a very promising enabling technology for future smart grids (SGs). Although many papers outline the important role of these paradigms in decentralized SG monitoring and control, they do not explicitly consider the effect of the uncertainties that characterize the actual power system environment. The effects of these uncertainties could compromise the convergence of consensus-based algorithms in the form of unwanted changes in the convergence time, increasing the convergence errors and compromising the repeatability of the convergence. To address this problem, this paper proposes a new consensus protocol based on the use of affine arithmetic. The application of this reliable consensus protocol to decentralized SG computing is explained in detail. Furthermore, several numerical results are presented and discussed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology.