Fast Coordination of Distributed Energy Resources Over Time-Varying Communication Networks

In this article, we consider the problem of optimally coordinating the response of a group of distributed energy resources (DERs) controlled by distributed agents so they collectively meet the electric power demanded by a collection of loads while minimizing the total generation cost and respecting the DER capacity limits. This problem can be cast as a convex optimization problem, where the global objective is to minimize a sum of convex functions corresponding to individual DER generation cost while satisfying 1) linear inequality constraints corresponding to the DER capacity limits and 2) a linear equality constraint corresponding to the total power generated by the DERs being equal to the total power demand. We develop distributed algorithms to solve the DER coordination problem over time-varying communication networks with either bidirectional or unidirectional communication links. The proposed algorithms can be seen as distributed versions of a centralized primal-dual algorithm. One of the algorithms proposed for directed communication graphs has a geometric convergence rate even when communication out-degrees are unknown to agents. We showcase the proposed algorithms using the standard IEEE 39-bus test system and compare their performance against other ones proposed in the literature.