Distributed control applied to combined electricity and natural gas infrastructures

The optimization of combined electricity and natural gas systems is addressed in this paper. The two networks are connected via energy hubs. Using the energy hub concept, the interactions between the different infrastructures can be analyzed. A system consisting of several interconnected hubs forms a distributed power generation structure where each hub is controlled by its respective control agent. Recently, a distributed control method has been applied to such a system. The overall optimization problem including the entire system is decomposed into subproblems according to the control agents. In this paper, a parallel and serial version of that method is discussed. Simulation results are obtained through experiments on a three-hub benchmark system.