Agent Technologies for Control Applications in the Power Grid

Remotely controlled network devices will transform the way power systems are operated and studied. One possible application for this is the use of agent based technologies to implement decentralized control algorithms. The agents would perform local control actions instead of centralized control actions. Two cases are presented. The second case would be examined in detail. In the first case, the power losses were minimized using a decentralized algorithm and the results were similar to those found using a centralized algorithm. In the second case, transmission line overloads are relieved by controlling the load in the system. For this case, a detailed algorithm to control loads was presented to show the integration that would be required between the transmission and distribution network. This work showed that to implement decentralized control a reliable communication network within the power system will be necessary.