Decentralized coordination of energy resources in electricity distribution networks

This paper is concerned with optimal multi-period scheduling of distributed energy resources (DERs) dispersed in electricity distribution networks. DERs considered here comprise programmable loads with the ability to adjust their real power, photovoltaic (PV) generators with the ability to inject or absorb reactive power, as well as storage units (batteries) that can be charged or discharged and also offer the capability of reactive power control. A convex program is formulated to jointly schedule DERs over a time horizon. The objective to be minimized is a weighted combination of energy losses on the lines and cost of power provision offset by end-user satisfaction. A decentralized solver based on the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) is developed, featuring closed-form updates per node and relying only on communication between neighboring nodes.