Consensus Based Approach for Economic Dispatch Problem in a Smart Grid

Economic dispatch problem (EDP) is an important problem in the smart grid. Its aim is to minimize the total cost when generating certain amount of power. This paper proposes a novel consensus based algorithm to solve EDP in a distributed fashion. The quadratic cost functions are adopted in the problem formulation, and the strongly connected communication topology is used for the information exchange. Unlike the centralized approach, the proposed algorithm allows generators to learn the mismatch information between demand and total power generation through a distributed manner. The estimated mismatch information is used as a feedback to adjust current power generation by each generator. With a tactical initial setup, generators can automatically minimize the total cost in a collective sense while satisfying power balance equation.