Efficient coordinated power distribution on private infrastructure

Efficient Coordinated Power Distribution on Private Infrastructure Andrew Perrault Master of Science Graduate Department of Computer Science University of Toronto 2013 Due to the design of current power distribution networks, it will become increasingly attractive for agents to generate their own power (distributed generation) and to construct private infrastructure (e.g., transmission lines) to exchange power with others nearby without using the main public grid. We show that such private transactions may increase overall load on the network because of the increased distance that power must flow from generation sources, thus increasing transmission loss. We present a coordination scheme that allows centralized control of private infrastructure while satisfying participation constraints and budget balance. Experiments show that our scheme reduces transmission losses by 4-5% when there are only a constant number of private lines and by 55%-60% when the number of private lines is proportional to the number of agents. These results hold even when there is only a small amount of distributed generation.