Adaptive Protection in Smart Distribution Networks: Coordination Demonstration of Multi-Agent Systems

Modern protection relays play a critical role in ensuring the safety and reliability of electrical networks. These relays offer advanced communication capabilities for easy integration with other grid devices and enable remote monitoring and control. Integrating Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) has the potential to further enhance coordination and cooperation among relays distributed across the grid infrastructure, facilitating efficient monitoring, control, and decision-making processes. This article presents a practical implementation of an adaptive MAS-based protection approach for power grid coordination. By leveraging advanced multi-core processors, the implementation demonstrates the feasibility and effectiveness of MAS techniques in real-time data analysis, decision-making, and agent coordination. STM32MPU boards are programmed to emulate MAS-based protection relays, utilizing IEC 61850 GOOSE communication between them. The demonstration results showcase the ability of modern protection relays to enhance grid management through effective coordination among multiple relays.