Management of Distributed Energy Resources Using Intelligent Multi-Agent System

The electricity grid is the backbone of the power network and is at the focal point of technological innovations. Utilities need to introduce distributed intelligence into their existing infrastructure to make them more reliable, efficient, and capable of exploiting and integrating alternative sources of energy. The intelligent grid includes the infrastructure and technologies required to allow distributed generation of energy with increasing the operational efficiency through distributed control and monitoring of resources. Intelligent grid should be self-healing and reconfigurable to guard against man-made and natural disasters. One way to assure such characteristics in an electric power grid is to design small and autonomous subsets of the larger grid. These subsets are called intelligent microgrids which are used as a test bed for conglomerate innovations in communication technologies, smart metering, co-generation, and distributed intelligence and control. The test bed serves to showcase the capabilities of the developed systems, thereby acABSTRACT