An event-based resource management framework for distributed decision-making in decentralized virtual power plants

Date
2016-07-28
Authors
Zhang, J
Seet, B-C
Lie, T
Supervisor
Item type
Journal Article
Degree name
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
MDPI
Abstract

The Smart Grid incorporates advanced information and communication technologies (ICTs) in power systems, and is characterized by high penetration of distributed energy resources (DERs). Whether it is the nation-wide power grid or a single residential building, the energy management involves different types of resources that often depend on and influence each other. The concept of virtual power plant (VPP) has been proposed to represent the aggregation of energy resources in the electricity market, and distributed decision-making (DDM) plays a vital role in VPP due to its complex nature. This paper proposes a framework for managing different resource types of relevance to energy management for decentralized VPP. The framework views VPP as a hierarchical structure and abstracts energy consumption/generation as contractual resources, i.e., contractual offerings to curtail load/supply energy, from third party VPP participants for DDM. The proposed resource models, event-based approach to decision making, multi-agent system and ontology implementation of the framework are presented in detail. The effectiveness of the proposed framework is then demonstrated through an application to a simulated campus VPP with real building energy data.

Description
Keywords
Resource management framework; Distributed decision-making; Virtual power plant; Smart grid
Source
Energies 2016, 9, 595; doi:10.3390/en9080595
Publisher's version
Rights statement
© 2016 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).