An Incentive-Based Mechanism to Alleviate Active Power Congestion in a Multi-Agent Distribution System

Increasing the integration of distributed energy resources (DERs) inspired by environmental and governmental incentives, beside the introduction of multi-agent structure perspective have led to a paradigm shift of operational conditions in distribution systems. In this context, the traditional concept of fit and forget in the distribution grid management would not be efficient in the modern distribution systems and consequently new mechanisms should be developed in order to enable the distribution system operator (DSO) to efficiently manage the grid congestion caused by peak power output of DERs or load demands requests. In this article, the Stackelberg game concept is employed to develop an incentive-based mechanism that facilitates the contribution of local flexible resources operated by independent agents in the congestion management of distribution grids. Therefore, the proposed bi-level formulation would result in congestion alleviation in the multi-agent system; while the objectives associated with DSO and independent agents are fulfilled. Additionally, the developed framework enables DSO to reconfigure the network to decrease the operational costs associated with the congestion alleviation procedure. Finally, the strong-duality concept is utilized in order to combine the two-level problem into a one-level problem and the obtained model is implemented on IEEE-37 bus test system to investigate its effectiveness in congestion management in the distribution system.