Decentralized coordination of plug-in hybrid vehicles for imbalance reduction in a smart grid

  • Authors:

  • Stijn Vandael;Nelis Boucké;Tom Holvoet;Klaas De Craemer;Geert Deconinck

  • Affiliations:

  • Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium;Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium;Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium;Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium;Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium

  • Venue:
  • The 10th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems - Volume 2
  • Year:
  • 2011

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Abstract

Intelligent electricity grids, or 'Smart Grids', are being introduced at a rapid pace. Smart grids allow the management of new distributed power generators such as solar panels and wind turbines, and innovative power consumers such as plug-in hybrid vehicles. One challenge in Smart Grids is to fulfill consumer demands while avoiding infrastructure overloads. Another challenge is to reduce imbalance costs: after ahead scheduling of production and consumption (the socalled 'load schedule'), unpredictable changes in production and consumption yield a cost for repairing this balance. To cope with these risks and costs, we propose a decentralized, multi-agent system solution for coordinated charging of PHEVs in a Smart Grid. Essentially, the MAS utilizes an "intention graph" for expressing the flexibility of a fleet of PHEVs. Based on this flexibility, charging of PHEVs can be rescheduled in real-time to reduce imbalances. We discuss and evaluate two scheduling strategies for reducing imbalance costs: reactive scheduling and proactive scheduling. Simulations show that reactive scheduling is able to reduce imbalance costs by 14%, while proactive scheduling yields the highest imbalance cost reduction of 44%.