Leader-Follower Strategies for Energy Management of Multi-Microgrids

This paper presents the application of bilevel programming for analyzing competitive situations of hierarchical decision making between an Energy Services Provider representing several microgrids (MGs)-each one comprising controllable loads and dispatchable distributed generation units-and a large central production unit. The rules of the interaction between the two entities are determined in a bilateral contract. This operation is compared to the vertically integrated operation of this system, i.e., only one entity manages both the central production unit and the distributed resources of the MG. This comparison highlights the benefits of applying a two level structure in the simulated interaction.