Demand response using multi-agent system

Smart grid has been a significant development trend of power system. Within smart grid, microgrids share the burden of traditional grids and reduce energy consumption cost. In a microgrid, consumers are the integral part with varying demand throughout a day. Furthermore, the penetration of Plug-in-Hybrid Vehicles (PHEVs) is overloading the existing residential network and calls for dynamic strategy. This paper proposes a dynamic Demand Response (DR) approach in the context of isolated smart microgrid for a residential community. A multi-agent system is proposed for optimizing the demand response by updating the grid generation resources and controlling the customer load. The multi-agent system can switch customer load and controls the charging of PHEVs depending on their Battery State of Charge (BSOC) to reduce cost and avoid overload during peak hours. Simulation and numerical results show the effectiveness of using multi-agent system on reducing the energy consumption cost of the residential customers and also allowing electric vehicles charging during the peak hours.