Distributed Cooperative Optimal Control of Energy Storage Systems in a Microgrid

Due to the supply-demand imbalance in the microgrid, Energy Storage Systems (ESS) is often proposed to alleviate power imbalance fluctuation in a microgrid. To avoid the issues of single-point-failure and sophisticated communication network with centralized methods, this paper proposes a distributed cooperative optimal control of multiple ESSs in a microgrid. Based on the multi-agent framework, each agent only utilizes the local information and its neighbors' information. The proposed distributed method is based on a two-layer procedure. The outer layer is State of Charge (SOC) management of the ESS, which designs the SOC reference based on the time-of-use pricing. The internal layer is used to track the SOC reference values in an optimal way. The simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed distributed method.