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

配电系统在发电、用电和运营方面继续发生变革。对可持续发展的担忧正在推动分布式可再生能源、插电式混合动力汽车、需求响应计划和先进的计量基础设施的广泛集成。借助先进的通信、传感和计算功能，这些新兴设备和资源有可能极大地提高运营效率和可靠性。尽管如此，分布式系统在通信、感知和计算方面配备的网络资源有限。总体而言，与大容量输电网相比，它们支持的网络基础设施现在和将来都不那么可靠，也不那么普遍。面对这一现状的挑战，该项目将为运行分配系统开发新的协调算法，这些算法认识到在可预见的未来基本通信和一般网络基础设施的可获得性有限和质量较低。该项目的成功完成将促进在配电系统中更多地部署分布式能源资源和网络基础设施。此外，该项目的结果将与业界分享，以便对实践产生影响。项目成果还将用于开发中学生教材和新的本科课程。该项目将开发通信认知算法，在稳定性、效率和可靠性方面具有可证明的性能。这些算法将被设计成对不同的不完美通信场景具有健壮性，例如有限的带宽、链路故障和通信延迟，但性能会适度下降。算法的一个关键特征是耦合的物流系统和网络通信网络之间的协调。在优化和控制的数学工具的基础上，该小组计划通过利用物理测量来补充网络通信网络以加快信息传播，从而重振算法设计。该研究项目由四个方面组成：(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)针对不完美的通信进行健壮设计；以及(4)将理论分析与实际实现相结合，并协调网络物理体系结构的设计。该项目将提供：(1)各种现实通信情景下的一套算法工具，其中包括关键系统部件的模型；(2)在线和不确定实施中对所开发算法的性能分析；(3)在真实的数值环境中的算法验证。这项研究将实现推进配电系统运营目标的目标，同时允许在更多功能和更低投资的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.