Agent and Consensus Approaches to Microgrid Coordination for Resilience Improvement

Microgrids are increasingly popular small-scale power systems with local generation, storage and loads. Interconnecting several microgrids together could provide a flexible structure for power distribution and enable large renewable and distributed penetration levels, as well as coordination between microgrids when disturbances occur. This paper proposes a control strategy for such connected microgrids. Although a microgrid aims to operate independently in normal conditions, several microgrids can support each other in case of contingencies or insufficient generation. Such coordination aims at reducing load shedding and generation curtailment, and is achieved by coordinating the output power of microgrids. Each microgrid is equipped with an agent to achieve self-control and to negotiate with other microgrids, for example to request power to its neighbors to support its loads. The Newton-Raphson and consensus methods are used to calculate the output power of each microgrid. The control strategy is validated using simulations on an IEEE 13-node test feeder.