A major issue in future smart grid is how intelligent devices and independent producers can respectively change their power consumption/production to achieve near maximum efficiency for the power network. Limited communications between devices and producers necessitates a transformative approach where the elements of the network can act in an autonomous manner with limited information or communications, yet achieve near optimal performance. This is the main topic of the proposed project.
By combining the two-way power flow with the two-way information flow, demand response can be applied to reduce the peak demand, shift load for economic benefits, reduce operating reserves and improve the grid stability. An important obstacle has been the lack of supporting information, communication and computation infrastructures that can ensure quality of service (QoS) for various demand response applications and devices. This project goal is to develop transformative and applicable distributed algorithms and architectures with provable performance for demand control subject to communication constraints in power networks. Results from this project will be applied to achieve high-performance and high-confidence management of the smart buildings and cities, and further contributes to the goal of improving urban sustainability.
