Plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) are considered as flexible loads since their charging schedules can be shifted over the course of a day without impacting drivers’ mobility. This property can be exploited to reduce charging costs and adverse network impacts. The increasing number of PEVs makes the use of distributed charging coordinating strategies preferable to centralized ones. In this paper, we propose an agent-based method which enables a fully distributed solution of the PEVs’ Coordinated Charging (PEV-CC) problem. This problem aims at coordinating the charging schedules of a fleet of PEVs to minimize costs of serving demand subject to individual PEV constraints originating from battery limitations and charging infrastructure characteristics. In our proposed approach, each PEV’s charging station is considered as an agent that is equipped with communication and computation capabilities. Our multiagent approach is an iterative procedure which finds a distributed solution for the first order optimality conditions of the underlying optimization problem through local computations and limited information exchange with neighboring agents. In particular, the updates for each agent incorporate local information such as the Lagrange multipliers, as well as enforcing the local PEV’s constraints as local innovation terms. Finally, the performance of our proposed algorithm is evaluated on a fleet of 100 PEVs as a test case, and the results are compared with the centralized solution of the PEV-CC problem.
Most communication-based decentralized approaches introduced so far require the exchange of information with an aggregator, which acts as a coordinating agent @cite_26 @cite_6 @cite_23 @cite_16 @cite_10 @cite_9 . The information exchanged is however not sensitive (typically the charging schedule and dual variables). The approaches in @cite_26 @cite_23 consider non-cooperative agents and are based on mean field game theory, whereas the approaches in @cite_6 @cite_16 @cite_10 @cite_9 consider cooperative agents. The charging optimization problem is decomposed using the Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers in @cite_16 @cite_10 . The decentralized approaches mentioned above require each PEV to communicate with a central agent and are therefore less robust towards failure than peer-to-peer based distributed schemes.
@cite_26 @cite_9 @cite_6 @cite_23 @cite_16 @cite_10
1504352750 2130343868 2016038157 1964861297
Decentralised coordination in multi-agent systems is typically achieved using communication. However, in many cases, communication is expensive to utilise because there is limited bandwidth, it may be dangerous to communicate, or communication may simply be unavailable at times. In this context, we argue for a rational approach to communication --- if it has a cost, the agents should be able to calculate a value of communicating. By doing this, the agents can balance the need to communicate with the cost of doing so. In this research, we present a novel model of rational communication, that uses reward shaping to value communications, and employ this valuation in decentralised POMDP policy generation. In this context, reward shaping is the process by which expectations over joint actions are adjusted based on how coordinated the agent team is. An empirical evaluation of the benefits of this approach is presented in two domains. First, in the context of an idealised bench-mark problem, the multiagent Tiger problem, our method is shown to require significantly less communication (up to 30 fewer messages) and still achieves a 30 performance improvement over the current state of the art. Second, in the context of a larger-scale problem, RoboCupRescue, our method is shown to scale well, and operate without recourse to significant amounts of domain knowledge. In this paper a novel approach to the problem of decentralized agreement toward a common point in space in a multi-agent system is proposed. Our method allows the agents to agree on the relative location of the network centroid respect to themselves, on a common reference frame and therefore on a common heading. Using this information a global positioning system for the agents using only local measurements can be achieved. In the proposed scenario, an agent is able to sense the distance between itself and its neighbors and the direction in which it sees its neighbors with respect to its local reference frame. Furthermore only point-to-point asynchronous communications between neighboring agents are allowed thus achieving robustness against random communication failures. The proposed algorithms can be thought as general tools to locally retrieve global information usually not available to the agents. Efficient and reliable demand side management techniques for community charging of plug-in hybrid electrical vehicles (PHEVs) and plug-in electrical vehicles (PEVs) are needed, as large numbers of these vehicles are being introduced to the power grid. To avoid overloads and maximize customer preferences in terms of time and cost of charging, a constrained nonlinear optimization problem can be formulated. In this paper, we have developed a novel cooperative distributed algorithm for charging control of PHEVs PEVs that solves the constrained nonlinear optimization problem using Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) conditions and consensus networks in a distributed fashion. In our design, the global optimal power allocation under all local and global constraints is reached through peer-to-peer coordination of charging stations. Therefore, the need for a central control unit is eliminated. In this way, single-node congestion is avoided when the size of the problem is increased and the system gains robustness against single-link node failures. Furthermore, via Monte Carlo simulations, we have demonstrated that the proposed distributed method is scalable with the number of charging points and returns solutions, which are comparable to centralized optimization algorithms with a maximum of 2 sub-optimality. Thus, the main advantages of our approach are eliminating the need for a central energy management coordination unit, gaining robustness against single-link node failures, and being scalable in terms of single-node computations. The paper develops and illustrates a novel decentralized charging control algorithm for large populations of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs). The proposed algorithm is an application of the so-called Nash certainty equivalence principle (or mean-field games.) The control scheme seeks to achieve social optimality by establishing a PEV charging schedule that fills the overnight demand valley. The paper discusses implementation issues and computational complexity, and illustrates concepts with various numerical examples.