Distributed coordination of smart devices to mitigate intermittency of renewables for a smarter grid

Challenge:

Manage demand-supply imbalance in the power grid with a high degree of intermittent renewable energy (solar and wind) without using expensive batteries

Solution:

Providing Virtual Energy Storage (VES) through demand manipula/on of consumer loads, while maintaining consumers' quality of service

Three innovations:

• Time-scale separation for resource allocation
• Distributed coordination without inter- agent communication by using local measurements that provide global information, such as deviation of grid frequency from 60 Hz
• Randomized control to break the complexity barrier of devices. combinatorial optimization involved in decision making for a large collection of on/off devices

Scientific Impact:

• Distributed coordination of "agents" to obtain reliable aggregate behavior that is robust to benign and malicious failures.
• Break the complexity barrier involved in a class of combinatorial optimization problems

Broader Impact:

• Integration of higher amounts of renewable energy into the grid without the use of expensive batteries
• Training of graduate and undergraduate students
• Dissemination nationally and internationally, especially to the utility Industry (OUC, FPL, EDF(France))