Decentral smart grid control

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

  • Benjamin Schäfer - , Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization (Author)
  • Moritz Matthiae - , Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization (Author)
  • Marc Timme - , Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, University of Göttingen (Author)
  • Dirk Witthaut - , Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, Jülich Research Centre, University of Cologne (Author)

Abstract

Stable operation of complex flow and transportation networks requires balanced supply and demand. For the operation of electric power grids - due to their increasing fraction of renewable energy sources - a pressing challenge is to fit the fluctuations in decentralized supply to the distributed and temporally varying demands. To achieve this goal, common smart grid concepts suggest to collect consumer demand data, centrally evaluate them given current supply and send price information back to customers for them to decide about usage. Besides restrictions regarding cyber security, privacy protection and large required investments, it remains unclear how such central smart grid options guarantee overall stability. Here we propose a Decentral Smart Grid Control, where the price is directly linked to the local grid frequency at each customer. The grid frequency provides all necessary information about the current power balance such that it is sufficient to match supply and demand without the need for a centralized IT infrastructure. We analyze the performance and the dynamical stability of the power grid with such a control system. Our results suggest that the proposed Decentral Smart Grid Control is feasible independent of effective measurement delays, if frequencies are averaged over sufficiently large time intervals.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Article number015002
JournalNew journal of physics
Volume17
Publication statusPublished - 9 Jan 2015
Peer-reviewedYes
Externally publishedYes

External IDs

ORCID /0000-0002-5956-3137/work/142242467

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Keywords

  • Decentral Smart Grid Control, delayed coupling, dynamic demand response, econophysics, frequency-price coupling, oscillator networks, transient stability

Library keywords