Tasking and Policy for Distributed Microgrid Management

This paper describes an automated, distributed approach to controlling, operating, and managing electric power within a microgrid. Operation in the context of an external primary power grid is considered. We wish to construct a system that will allow us to state and enforce an energy policy that captures what we want the system to do under various conditions, including light and full duty cycles with and without grid connection, power failure, communication blackout, and other unexpected circumstances. We outline the duties required of a set of distributed decision-making entities given the task of managing the system, in particular as the system transitions from connected to local operation, and discuss several algorithms useful in this context. We also discuss the nature of the information structure needed to record operational policy.