Cooperative Distributed Scheduling for Storage Devices in Microgrids using Dynamic KKT Multipliers and Consensus Networks

Scheduling of storage devices in microgrids with multiple renewable energy resources is crucial for their optimal and reliable operation. With proper scheduling, the storage devices can capture the energy when the renewable generation is high and utility energy price is low, and release it when the demand is high or utility energy price is expensive. This scheduling is a multi-step optimization problem where different time-steps are dependent on each other. Conventionally, this problem is solved centrally. The central controller should have access to the real-time states of the system as well as the predicted load and renewable generation information. It should also have the capability to send dispatch commands to each storage device. However, as the number of devices increases, the centralized approach would not be scalable and will be vulnerable to single point of failure. Combining the idea of dynamic KKT multipliers with consensus networks, this paper introduces a novel algorithm that can optimally schedule the storage devices in a microgrid solely through peer-to-peer coordination of devices with their neighbors without using a central controller.