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Improving Sustainability of Hybrid Energy Systems Part II: Managing Multiple Objectives With A Multiagent System
Improving Sustainability of Hybrid Energy Systems Part II: Managing Multiple Objectives With A Multiagent System
1, JANUARY 2014
Abstract—Hybrid power systems and microgrids may employ a proving performance for such systems is often subjective and
mixture of dispatchable (conventional) and nondispatchable (re- can be hard to fully define, as will be discussed below.
newable) generators alongside storage. Whether in grid-connected Microgrids continue to be of interest as infrastructure compo-
or grid-isolated (islanded) modes of operation, these systems
may face multiple competing objectives when managing diverse nents that can readily connect with or separate from the utility
installed assets. Power management of hybrid energy systems, grid, sustaining continuous operations while offering broader
therefore, involves operational tradeoffs amongst Pareto-optimal opportunities to integrate locally assigned objectives for power
solutions. These attributes, including the ready implementation management. Additionally, it is expected that a prime means
of distributed renewable generation and the incorporation of for deploying distributed energy resources (DERs), especially
methods to locally manage power-networked assets, make them a
unique area of study for pursing better sustainable performance. renewables, will be in hybrid or microgrid systems. The supply
In part I of this paper, storage system round-trip efficiency and available from renewable DERs may vary greatly within a very
operational cost concepts were formulated for use in real-time short period of time, and with many such assets coupled on a
dispatch decisions towards yielding improved performance of relatively small power network, asset dispatch and control de-
overall system objectives. In this paper (part II), the concepts of cisions must be made at a more rapid pace than is common for
part I are implemented with a decentralized multiagent system
(MAS). This MAS is employed for power management of a hybrid conventional power systems. The combination of these factors,
(diesel-storage battery) microgrid in grid-connected and islanded along with a desire to incorporate local power management ob-
modes. This paper highlights the development and implementation jectives, represents a shift in the operational approach towards
of an MAS suitable for hybrid and microgrid system applications, installed assets, including the employment of storage systems.
as well as presenting an important discussion about the tradeoffs In this paper, the authors contribute an approach to address
associated with multiobjective design for power management.
The simulation results presented demonstrate improvement in the multiobjective decision-making for hybrid or microgrid sys-
sustainable performance of the hybrid system. tems that is different than conventional techniques for power
management. Here, the authors expand on the MAS from their
Index Terms—Distributed generation, microgrid, multiagent.
previous work, [1], and utilize the formulations in part I of this
paper [2], within the decision-making MAS framework, to seek
I. INTRODUCTION power management solutions for a diesel-battery storage hybrid
stationary power system. The authors intend to introduce the
complexity seeking optimal power management solutions for
M ICROGRIDS are still rare as their development is at an
early stage, but conceptually, microgrids are widely un-
derstood to be self-contained power systems of a few MW or
multiple objectives and diverse assets incorporated into a micro-
grid. MAS methods are recent and their application to the micro-
grid multiobjective problem is new. Therefore, the authors seek
less of generation, controllable and noncontrollable load cen-
to present the MAS approach used as a foundation for future
ters, and local energy storage. More common globally are hy-
works that will compare MAS performance to other techniques,
brid systems that couple two or more generation and/or storage
including centralized decision-making methods; what method-
assets together to enhance system operation. Clearly, a primary
ology or technique is best for addressing microgrid management
purpose of implementing multiple assets in a hybrid or micro-
holistically remains to be shown. The diesel-battery hybrid was
grid configuration is to improve performance of the overall en-
chosen as an example for two reasons. First, for hybrid systems
ergy system. It must be noted, however, that notions of im-
employed worldwide, diesel-battery systems are some of the
most commonly seen, especially in islanded applications. This
Manuscript received October 14, 2012; revised February 27, 2013 and May
allows ready comparison of MAS power management to con-
24, 2013; accepted June 04, 2013. Date of publication August 08, 2013; date of
current version December 12, 2013. This work was supported in part by NEC ventional control methods. Examples range from on-grid unin-
Laboratories-America, Inc., and in part by DOE Award DE-FG02-11ER46817. terruptible power supplies (UPS) [3], to off-grid rural commu-
C. M. Colson and M. H. Nehrir are with the Electrical and Computer En-
nity power [4], [5], to remote base transceiver stations (BTS)
gineering Department, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT 59717 USA
(e-mail: christopher.colson@msu.montana.edu; hnehrir@ece.montana.edu). for critical telecommunications [6]–[8]. Second, the diesel-bat-
R. K. Sharma and B. Asghari are with NEC Laboratories America, Cupertino, tery hybrid is a suitable example of a system that combines a
CA 95014 USA (e-mail: ratnesh@sv.nec-labs.com; babak@sv.nec-labs.com).
small number of controllable assets, each with sufficient com-
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. plexity of optimizable objectives, to be illustrative of MAS de-
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TSTE.2013.2269319 cision-making.
variables. This means that the Pareto set of solutions in one time
increment may be dramatically different from the Pareto set in
the next increment. This phenomenon, as well as the microgrid
MAS ability to find strong solutions along the Pareto front, will
be shown in Section IV.
TABLE I TABLE II
MICROGRID PARAMETERS SCENARIO PARAMETERS
that was only collected for testing and was not available to the
agents. While asset dispatch decisions were made exclusively
by the agents, the user could impose their will upon the storage
agents by specifying a relative importance between
revenue and battery health. The agents made dispatch decisions
independently, but communicated as appropriate.
In scenarios 1 and 2 below, simulation results are presented in
Fig. 3. Concept of operations for simulated two-asset microgrid. three increments: initial conditions, disturbance, and final con-
ditions. The results are presented this way for the purpose of
clarity, illustrating the MAS decision-making outcomes and al-
IV. SIMULATION AND RESULTS—GRID CONNECTED CASE lowing easier comparison of system conditions upon a system
This section builds on the analytic work developed in [1] and disturbance. In Section V, the results for a similar system (is-
[2]. Here, a simulated grid-connected microgrid includes a hy- landed case) are presented and aggregated outcomes are com-
brid system composed of a diesel genset and a lead-acid storage pared with the outcomes from a conventional case.
battery bank serving a fixed load center with noncontrollable
loads (parameters shown in Table I). The load was fixed in these A. Scenario 1: Spot Market Price Change
scenarios to simplify the comparative results which would be The purpose of this scenario was to demonstrate how agents
affected by changing demand. The microgrid is connected to sense and respond to a system disturbance, using local cost
the utility through a point of common coupling (PCC), either and performance information to guide their decision-making.
supplying or consuming energy across the interconnection. The Here, the microgrid was simulated at an initially stable con-
MAS used for this study employed a producer agent assigned dition, given in Table II, interconnected with the utility and
to the diesel genset, both a producer agent and consumer agent all objectives weighted equally . Initially given the
assigned to the storage asset, and an observer agent assigned to high cost of utility electricity supply (Fig. 3), the microgrid
pass utility spot price information to the MAS collective, shown was both operating its diesel and discharging the battery to
in Fig. 3. offset purchases from the utility required to power the local
In the decentralized decision-making process, two objective load. Then, system conditions were disturbed by a significant
functions were imposed upon each agent within the system: increase in the market price of electricity supplied by the
minimize operational cost and maximize system perfor- utility, from $0.31 to $0.38 per kWh, yielding a total cost of
mance . Operational cost was defined by fuel consump- load operation increasing from $31/h to $38/h. Given a new
tion and the cost of battery charge/discharge, respectively. Per- price environment, the diesel producer agent manipulated its
formance was defined by operational efficiency and environ- asset to operate more profitably and with better performance
mental emissions, namely total hydrocarbons (THC) and carbon within constraints. During the short time period of grid price
dioxide (CO ). The solutions decided by the agents translate change, SOC of the battery did not change appreciably. After
into actual operation of their assets. For the purpose of evalu- the battery producer and consumer agents communicated, their
ating the solution quality of the whole microgrid, the individual decision was to continue discharging at predisturbance levels.
cost and performance results of each agent’s solution was aggre- Ultimately, as grid price rose in this scenario, new operating
gated. This information is highlighted by shading in Tables II parameters determined by the agents lead to better overall mi-
and III. It is important to note, however, that this overall mea- crogrid performance and more operational savings than prior to
sure of microgrid performance is a form of global knowledge the disturbance. As described earlier in this section, the overall
50 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SUSTAINABLE ENERGY, VOL. 5, NO. 1, JANUARY 2014
TABLE III
SCENARIO PARAMETERS
Fig. 5. Screenshot showing the discrete search space for postdisturbance con-
ditions of scenario 1. The objective functions, to minimize cost and maximize
performance, form the plot axes. Each circle represents a solution.
Fig. 6. Screenshots of the user input interface for the relative importance of
revenue versus battery health/longevity. Balanced initial conditions of scenario
2 are left; disturbance conditions (favoring battery health/longevity) are shown
on the right.
Fig. 7. Screenshot showing the predisturbance cost and performance characteristics for the storage producer and consumer agents in scenario 2. The solid vertical
line represents actual battery dispatch; the dotted vertical line represents the dispatch limit.
Fig. 8. Screenshot showing the postdisturbance cost and performance characteristics for the storage producer and consumer agents in scenario 2. The solid vertical
line represents the actual battery dispatch.
Fig. 10. Screenshot showing the cost and performance characteristics for the storage producer and consumer agents after the battery charging has recovered
SOC to 75% from the postdisturbance conditions of scenario 2. The solid vertical line represents the actual battery dispatch; the dotted vertical line represents the
dispatch limit.
Fig. 12. Normalized load demand profiles for 50-home village [15].
TABLE V
FOUR SIMULATION SCENARIOS FOR 24-HOUR SUMMER WEEKEND DAY (BEST METRICS IN SCENARIO SHADED IN DARK GREY)
the diesel and battery assets that are not present in the grid-con- sider diesel or battery efficiency, emissions, or costs. For the
nected case. In other words, when grid-connected, each asset is purpose of comparison, this conventional power management
fairly free to operate where the assigned agent determines the scheme is used as the base case. In Table V, the conventional
best operating point to be. However, in the islanded case, the case is compared to the operation of the MAS under three sep-
agents must coordinate their operating points to precisely meet arate power management approaches:
load demand. 1) Battery operation is favored over the diesel.
Clearly, the capacity ratings of the diesel and battery assets 2) Diesel operation is favored over the battery.
matter significantly in the islanded case. After all, the asset rat- 3) Neither asset is favored; dispatch optimization decisions
ings determine how much energy storage is available to sup- are made relative to capacity rating.
plement dispatchable power, as well as how long it takes to re- In order to appropriately compare the operational results be-
plenish stored energy. To that end, two sizes of diesel gensets tween the power management methods, metrics such as effi-
and two sizes of batteries were considered in this study. Sizes ciency, cost, and emissions make up the rows of Table V. The
were dictated by load demand, shown in Table IV. Using each darkly shaded boxes indicate the power management method
possible combination of asset capacities, four unique scenarios that achieved the best results within the scenario. Below the dark
were used for simulations: Large Diesel Small Battery; Large horizontal line, the last four rows give the combined microgrid
Diesel Large Battery; Small Diesel Small Battery; and results. For each scenario, the best result within a row is high-
Small Diesel Large Battery. lighted with dark shading. It can be noted from Table V that the
Conventionally, diesel-battery hybrid systems operate with a MAS that used a blend of both assets’ cost and performance ob-
fairly simple control strategy. In terms of power management, jectives to guide agent decisions, rather than focus on attempting
the method may be summarized by the following rules: to optimize a single asset, consistently yielded the best results
1) The battery supplies power to the load until reaching a low (achieves 10 of the 16 possible best solutions for system metrics
voltage threshold, indicating low SOC. across the four scenarios). However, some observations are im-
2) At the low voltage threshold, the diesel runs, powering the portant to note. For the multiobjective problem, there are many
load in addition to fully recharging the battery. cases where conditions arise where superior results for one goal
3) As the battery charges, typically at a set rate, voltage rises may be sacrificed for another. This finding is consistent with
and charging power decreases. the Pareto-optimal discussion in Section II, and can be seen by
4) The diesel shuts off at a set low-load threshold. some of the results. For example, in the Large Diesel Large
This conventional control method for diesel-battery hybrid Battery scenario, the conventional dispatch method achieves the
operations can be problematic [16], and clearly does not con- best system efficiency. However, the MAS using mixed objec-
54 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SUSTAINABLE ENERGY, VOL. 5, NO. 1, JANUARY 2014
tives showed better costs and emissions for the same scenario. [7] M. D. Bhawan and J. L. N. Marg, Consultation Paper on Green
In other words, in this case, although the MAS using mixed ob- Telecommunications, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, New
Delhi, India, 3/2011, Feb. 2011.
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assist in making better power management decisions for hybrid
or microgrid systems that incorporate storage. The consider-
ation of how tradeoffs between objectives affect the overall Chris M. Colson (S’07–M’13) received the B.S.
degree in control systems engineering from the
power management solution is often difficult to deduce, but United States Naval Academy, in 1999, the MEM
discussion presented herein offers some insight into addressing degree from Old Dominion University, in 2006,
tradeoffs towards a more capable and responsive power system, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from
Montana State University, in 2012.
especially when augmented by hybrid or microgrid systems. He served as a Submarine Warfare Officer in the
The combination of multiple assets into microgrids and the U.S. Navy and was a National Science Foundation
use of MAS architectures, such as shown in this paper, offer (NSF) Graduate Research Fellow. His research inter-
ests include microgrids, power system integration of
opportunities to embed decentralized intelligence into emerging emerging technologies, and intelligent computational
power systems and, ultimately, can provide significant “smarts” methods.
at the lowest hierarchical level of the power system.
REFERENCES
M. Hashem Nehrir (S’68–M’71–SM’89–F’10–LF’13) is a Professor of Elec-
[1] C. M. Colson and M. H. Nehrir, “Comprehensive real-time microgrid trical and Computer Engineering at Montana State University. His research in-
power management and control with distributed agents,” IEEE Trans. terests include modeling and control of power systems, alternative energy power
Smart Grid, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 617–627, Mar. 2013. generation systems, and application of intelligent control to power systems.
[2] C. M. Colson and M. H. Nehrir, “Improving sustainability of hybrid
energy systems—Part I: Incorporating battery round-trip efficiency and
operational cost factors,” IEEE Trans. Sustain. Energy, accepted for
publication.
[3] C. V. Nayar, M. Ashari, and W. W. L. Keerthipala, “A grid-interactive Ratnesh K. Sharma (M’11) has over 12 years experience in sustainable energy
photovoltaic uninterruptible power supply system using battery storage management for distribution systems in buildings and transportation. He is the
and a back up diesel generator,” IEEE Trans. Energy Convers., vol. 15, founding head of the Energy Management Department at NEC Laboratories
no. 3, pp. 348–353, Sep. 2000. America, Cupertino, CA, USA. He has authored more than 200 papers/technical
[4] R. W. Wies, R. A. Johnson, A. N. Agrawal, and T. J. Chubb, “Simulink reports and holds over 70 U.S. patents on energy management and related areas.
model for economic analysis and environmental impacts of a PV with
diesel-battery system for remote villages,” IEEE Trans. Power Syst.,
vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 692–700, May 2005.
[5] P. M. Crimp, S. Colt, and M. A. Foster, Renewable Power in Rural Babak Asghari (S’06–M’09) received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engi-
Alaska: Improved Opportunities for Economic Deployment, Institute neering from the University of Alberta, Canada. He is currently a researcher in
of the North—Arctic Energy Summit, Anchorage, AK, USA, 2008. the Energy Management Department at NEC Laboratories America, Cupertino,
[6] E. M. Nfah and J. M. Ngundam, “Evaluation of optimal power options CA, USA. His research interests include design of energy management systems
for base transceiver stations of mobile telephone networks cameroon,” for microgrids and real-time simulation and control of power systems and
Solar Energy, vol. 86, pp. 2935–2949, 2012. electric drives.