Multiagent based distributed control for operation cost minimization of droop controlled AC microgrid using incremental cost consensus

Microgrid, as a promising technology to integrate renewable energy resources in the distribution system, is gaining increasing research interests recently. Although many previous works have been done based on the droop control in a microgrid, they mainly focus on achieving proportional power sharing based on the power rating. With various types of distributed generator (DG) units in the system, factors that closely related to the operation cost, such as fuel cost and efficiencies of the generator should be taken into account in order to improve the efficiency of the whole system. In this paper, a multiagent based distributed method is proposed to minimize operation cost of the AC microgrid. Each DG is acting as an agent which regulates the power individually using proposed frequency scheduling method. Optimal power command is obtained through carefully designed consensus algorithm with only light communication between neighboring agents. Case studies verified that the proposed control strategy can effectively reduce the operation cost.