On Battery Management Strategies in Multi-agent Microgrid Management.

Multi Agent Systems (MAS) have been incorporated in numerous engineering applications including power systems. In recent years, with the advancement in Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Internet of Things (IoT) and smarter devices, this concept has become more and more applicable to grid management. Microgrids, as part of distribution grid are subject to continuous variation in demand, generation and grid conditions. Also, due to private ownership of some or all part of the microgrid (at least in the demand side), and privacy concerns of data transmitted, intelligent and independent agents could be used in management process by representing each component of the grid as an agent. As the importance of storage systems (especially batteries) is increasing with the higher penetration of the renewable energy into the electricity grid, proper battery management becomes vital in efficient microgrid management. In this paper, we focus on battery agent and propose three strategies for battery management in the multi agent based microgrid management framework. We also investigate the effect of each strategy on the total costs as well as the battery itself. In this system, the agents of different components are independent and they collaboratively communicate with each other to fulfil a global objective which is set to be minimising the total costs.