Optimal Microgrid Economic Operations under Progressive Second Price Auction Mechanisms

This paper studies the economic operation of microgrids in a distributed scenario such that the operational schedule of each of units, like generators, load units, storage units etc, in a microgrid system, is implemented by autonomous agents. We apply and generalize a so-called progressive second price auction mechanism which was firstly presented by Lazar and Semret for allocation of variable size shares of resources. In a microgrid system, (i) a storage unit, like plug-in electric vehicles, is a buyer when it charges or a seller when it discharges, and (ii) in connected mode with the main grid, besides the interactions among the individual units in the microgrid, units may sell (or buy) electricity resources from (or to) exogenous main grid with certain buying (or selling) price set by the utility. It makes the underlying auction problems distinct from most of the auction problems in the literature.