Multiagent-Based Distributed Coordination of Inverter-Based Resources for Optimal Operation of Microgrids Considering Communication Failures

This paper proposes the distributed coordination of inverter-based resources, to optimize the operational cost of a microgrid system. The microgrid is considered a multiagent system, which includes a distributed generator agent and energy storage system agent. A communication network is utilized to exchange information among agents. The issue of communication failures is addressed in the proposed strategy, to ensure the stable operation of the control system. A two-level hierarchical cooperative optimization system is proposed in this paper for distributed economic dispatch. The primary controller is responsible for the frequency and voltage regulations, and the secondary controller is implemented in a diffusion-based distributed control scheme, for optimal microgrid management. The proposed control strategy consistently maintains the optimal operation and frequency, even in the event of communication failures. A five-node multiagent system including a dispatchable agent is considered. Comparative studies with the conventional consensus strategy are represented, to prove the effectiveness of the proposed diffusion strategy. To demonstrate the practical feasibility of the proposed strategy, a controller hardware-in-the-loop testbed was developed for testing the proposed cyber-physical microgrid system, in which the controllers were implemented in multiple computers and the microgrid system was implemented in Opal-RT. The real-time experiment results showed the better cost optimization performance of the proposed diffusion strategy compared with the conventional consensus strategy.