Decentralised Control of Micro-Storage in the Smart Grid
August 17, 2011
In this paper researchers from the University of Southampton, propose a novel decentralised control mechanism to manage micro-storage in the smart grid. Their approach uses an adaptive pricing scheme that energy suppliers apply to home smart agents controlling micro-storage devices. In particular, they prove that the interaction between a supplier using the proposed pricing scheme and the actions of selfish micro-storage agents forms a globally stable feedback loop that converges to an efficient equilibrium. They further propose a market strategy that allows the supplier to reduce wholesale purchasing costs without increasing the uncertainty and variance for its aggregate consumer demand. Moreover, they empirically evaluate their mechanism (based on the UK grid data) and show that it yields savings of up to 16% in energy cost for consumers using storage devices with average capacity 10 kWh. Furthermore, they show that it is robust against extreme system changes.
For more information see: Decentralised Control of Micro-Storage in the Smart Grid
