Distributed analytics for steady state operation of autonomous microgrids

It has often been argued that microgrids that predominantly contain customer-owned generation (co-gen) should have autonomous control, i.e., their operation, even in grid-connected mode, should not be controlled by the utility providing the point of common coupling (PCC). Some of the control strategies proposed in recent literature rely on distributed control platforms, such as multi-agent systems (MAS). The analytics, i.e., computational and decision-making processes, that occur on these distributed computation platforms are fundamentally different from those that are performed in traditional control centers. This is due partly to the difference in the computation platforms and partly to the fact that microgrids are dynamic in configuration. This paper describes current research in the application of graph-theoretic and distributed computation concepts toward the development of analytics, such as load balancing and optimal operation, that can be implemented on a distributed platform, for the steady state operation of microgrids.