Agent-based power management of microgrids including renewable energy power generation

Future smart grids may rely on microgrid systems that integrate localized generation, load, and storage assets into autonomous power system entities. Seen as an enabling technology, microgrids offer solutions for both customers and system operators as building blocks of expanding power networks capable of broadly integrating distributed energy resources (DER) and providing a means to optimize local assets based on multiple objectives. In this paper, a distributed agent-based microgrid control architecture capable of coordinating and cooperatively achieving user-defined objectives is presented. Key attributes of centralized versus decentralized agent-based control are presented, as well as describing the challenges faced by operating a distributed architecture that must self-organize to appropriately coordinate the cooperative behavior of agents. Further, the demand for a robust, real-time microgrid power management and control framework that achieves effective operation and can optimize its local generation, load, and storage assets is discussed, along with the viability of distributed agent-based microgrid control towards achieving smart grid objectives.