Coordination of Micro-Storage Devices in Power Grids: A Multi-Agent System Approach for Energy Arbitrage

Abstract

This paper proposes a multi-agent framework for distributed coordination of large populations of domestic micro-batteries performing energy arbitrage (charging when electricity is cheap and discharging when it is expensive). An iterative control scheme is envisioned: the batteries autonomously modify their charge/discharge profile in response to updated price signals, in order to increase their payoff. The strategy update is characterized as a multi-valued mapping, expanding our previous work on large-scale deployment of flexible demand. This allows the application of Lyapunov stability tools to demonstrate fundamental properties of the proposed scheme, which always converges to a stable market configuration (characterized as an aggregative equilibrium) and achieves global optimality (total generation costs are considered as objective function). The implementation of the proposed control strategy in practical contexts is discussed and performance is evaluated through case studies on a large-scale power system.