When order matters: Communication scheduling for current injection control in micro grids

We consider a smart micro grid where multiple distributed energy sources (DESs) inject current to support loads and reduce power losses over the lines. Distributed current control algorithms rely on a communication infrastructure, to exchange control data among DESs. For stability purposes, a token ring approach is often implemented for the control, where at any given time a single node with communication and control capabilities (smart node) has the token and is in charge of implementing the control action entailed by the algorithms (i.e., current injection). In this paper, we investigate the token scheduling, defining optimality criteria, devising lightweight suboptimal rules and assessing the performance of the optimal and suboptimal but online techniques. Two relevant power loss minimization schemes from the literature are considered to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheduling, which is assessed over a large number of grid topologies, that are statistically generated according to established literature models.