The design of distributed control system for a hybrid energy supply network in a residential community

This study analyzes the key factors of distributed control design in the context of hybrid energy supply network. Major design factors are the formulation of a control objective function, approach of system partitioning, and level of providing information. The energy network used as a case study is composed of photovoltaics, fuel cell system, electrolyzer, ground source heat pumps, and energy storage systems. For optimal control, the objective function was designed to consider characteristics of grid-independent network and hybrid energy sources. When the energy network is divided into electrical and thermal system parts for the distributed control, placing the fuel cell system in the thermal system part was found to be advantageous in terms of heat supply optimization. In the given system, the performance of distributed control using all control information can be close to centralized control, and the distributed control can be an attractive option in terms of computational efficiency. However, when stored power was insufficient, the performance of the distributed control was difficult to approach to the centralized control.