Collaborative Research: Towards Communication-Cognizant Voltage Regulation and Energy Management for Power Distribution Systems

配电系统在发电、消费和运营环境方面不断发生变化。对可持续性的关注正在推动分布式可再生能源发电、插电式混合动力汽车、需求响应计划和先进计量基础设施的广泛整合。借助先进的通信、传感和计算能力，这些新兴设备和资源有可能极大地提高操作效率和可靠性。尽管如此，配电系统在通信、传感和计算方面配备的网络资源有限。总的来说，与大型输电网相比，它们的支持网络基础设施的可靠性和无处不在的程度将继续降低。在这种现状的挑战下，该项目将开发用于运营配电系统的新型协调算法，这些算法认识到在可预见的未来，底层通信和网络基础设施的可用性有限，质量较低。该项目的成功完成将促进分布式能源和网络基础设施在配电系统中的部署。此外，这个项目的成果将与业界分享，以便对实践产生影响。项目成果也将用于中学生教材的开发和一门新的本科课程。该项目将开发在稳定性、效率和可靠性方面具有可证明性能的通信识别算法。这些算法将被设计成对不同的不完美通信场景（如有限带宽、链路故障和通信延迟）具有鲁棒性，并具有优雅的退化性能。该算法的一个关键特征是耦合的物理分配系统和网络通信网络之间的协调。基于优化和控制的数学工具，该团队计划通过利用物理测量来补充加速信息传播的网络通信网络来振兴算法设计。该研究项目包括四个有凝聚力的重点：(1)开发和分析不使用通信的算法；(2)设计接近全局效率的分布式算法；(3)针对不完善的通信实现稳健设计；(4)将理论分析与现实实现相结合，协调网络物理体系结构的设计。该计划将提供：(i)一套适用于各种实际通信场景的算法工具，其中包含关键系统组件的模型；（ii）对所开发算法进行在线和不确定实现的性能分析；（iii）在实际表示的数值环境中进行算法验证。该研究将实现推进配电系统运行目标的目标，同时允许在更通用和低投资环境下实现实用的通信架构和算法实现。

Power distribution systems have continued to witness transformation in generation, consumption, and operational landscapes. Sustainability concerns are driving widespread integration of distributed renewable generation, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, demand-response programs, and advanced metering infrastructure. These emerging devices and resources have the potential to greatly improve operational efficiency and reliability with the aid of advanced communication, sensing, and computation capabilities. Nonetheless, distribution systems are equipped with limited cyber resources in communication, sensing, and computation. By and large, their supporting cyber infrastructure is, and continues to be, less reliable and less ubiquitous as compared to that for the bulk power transmission grid. Challenged by this status quo, this project will develop novel coordination algorithms for operating distribution systems, which are cognizant to the limited availability and low quality of the underlying communication and the cyber infrastructure in general in the foreseen future. Successful completion of this project will promote increased deployment of distributed energy resources and cyber infrastructures in distribution systems. In addition, results from this project will be shared with industry in order to have an impact on practice. Project results will also be employed in the development of educational materials for middle school students and a new undergraduate course.This project will develop communication-cognizant algorithms with provable performance in terms of stability, efficiency, and reliability. The algorithms will be designed to be robust to different imperfect communication scenarios, such as limited bandwidth, link failures, and communication delays, with graceful degradation performance. One key feature of the algorithms is the coordination between the coupled physical distribution systems and cyber communication networks. Building upon mathematical tools from optimization and control, the team plans to revitalize the algorithmic design by leveraging physical measurements to complement the cyber communication networks for accelerated information diffusion. The research project consists of four cohesive thrusts: (1) Developing and analyzing algorithms that use no communications; (2) Designing distributed algorithms to approach global efficiency; (3) Enabling robust designs against imperfect communication; and (4) Unifying theoretical analysis with real-world implementations, and coordinating the design of cyber-physical architectures. The project will deliver: (i) a suite of algorithmic tools under various realistic communication scenarios that incorporate models of key system components; (ii) performance analysis for the developed algorithms in an online and uncertain implementation; and (iii) algorithmic validations in a realistically represented numerical environment. The research will fulfill the objectives of advancing the operational goals of power distribution systems while allowing for practical communication architectures and algorithmic implementations under a more versatile and low investment environment.