Demand Control Management in Micro-grids: The Impact of Different Policies and Communication Network Topologies

Abstract: This work studies how the communication network between proactive consumers affects the power utilization and fairness in a simplified direct-current micro-grid model, composed by three coupled layers: physical (an electric circuit that represents a micro-grid), communication (a peer-to-peer network within the micro-grid) and regulatory (individual decision strategies). Our results show that, for optimal power utilization and fairness, a global knowledge about the system is needed, demonstrating the importance of a micro-grid aggregator to inform about the power consumption for different time periods.