A two-layer energy management for islanded microgrid based on inverse reinforcement learning and distributed ADMM

The development of a scheduling strategy for an islanded microgrid (IMG) is critical for ensuring the system’s stability and economic efficiency. Traditional scheduling strategies for IMGs predominantly utilize centralized management by the microgrid central controller (MGCC), which introduces a vulnerability to a single point of failure. To address this limitation, this paper presents a two-layer energy management strategy for IMGs based on the improved alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) and inverse reinforcement learning (IRL). First, the framework of the proposed strategy, comprising a scheduling layer and a real-time dispatch layer, is outlined. Next, the problem formulation of the scheduling layer is analyzed, and the proposed IRL-based management strategy for the energy storage system (ESS) is presented. Then, a distributed optimization algorithm based on the improved ADMM is proposed for the management of controllable distributed generators (CDGs) in the real-time dispatch layer. Lastly, the case study demonstrates the efficacy of the proposed strategy in diminishing MGCC dependency. The comparative analysis indicates that the proposed strategy outperforms existing scheduling strategies in terms of cost-effectiveness when the forecast error exceeds 3%. Moreover, in contrast to existing scheduling strategies, the proposed strategy mitigates the risk associated with a single point of failure.