A Multiagent System for Adaptive Power Flow Control in Electrical Transmission Systems

Large-scale integration of renewable energies causes a higher degree of volatility and uncertainty of power flows in the electrical transmission system in Europe, and thus a higher risk of cascading line outages possibly leading to blackouts. At the same time, the transformation of the power system into a cyber-physical system deploying evolved information and communication technology (ICT) solutions offers the opportunity to meet this challenge efficiently by intelligent control approaches instead of ample security reserves. In this paper, a novel approach for a distributed real-time coordination of power flow control is presented. For this, a multiagent system located decentrally at the substation level has been developed only relying on local measurements and interagent communication in contrast to global system models and centralized computations. Based on updated information received from neighboring agents, the agents quickly adapt to changing network situations and relieve overloads by coordinated action of power flow controlling (PFC) devices. For smoothing control behavior and for avoiding excitation of system oscillations, the extent of control actions also adapts to the severity of the network situation. For two study cases-examining the control system in the IEEE 39-bus 10-machine reference system and a large-scale model of the Western European transmission system-the performance of the multiagent system and ICT requirements is evaluated based on a co-simulation of the multiagent system and an electromechanical power system simulation.