Multi-Agent Based Techniques for Coordinating the Distribution of Electricity in a Micro-Grid Environment

By the year 2050, the UK must transition to a low carbon economy via an 80% reduction of all carbon emissions. In order to ensure that this challenging low carbon emissions plan is met, not only will energy need to be generated and used more efficiently, but technologies that use cleaner energy, such as the electrification of home heating and vehicles, will need to be introduced. This increase in demand for electricity will need to be balanced with additional supply, however the current national grid is not capable of sustaining this increase. Therefore a more dynamic and efficient two-way national grid will be required which incorporates intermittent renewable resources, micro-generators, micro-storage devices and agent managed microgrids. Fred Schweppe, a recognised world leader in the field of electric power, at Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1960 onwards, researched ways in which a dynamic national grid could be implemented. However at the time the technologies available were limited. This paper compares the current state of the art techniques at solving some of problems Schweppe identified, describes the agent coordination algorithms that are used, and suggests some future research opportunities on applying agent coordination algorithms, that have not previously been used, to microgrids.