Distributed operational management of microgrids: a second order dual update approach

This paper develops a Distributed Energy Management System (EMS) to optimally allocate electric and thermal power production in a polygenerative microgrid. The EMS problem is formulated as a multiperiod convex optimization problem and solved using AL-SODU, a new distributed algorithm based on the augmented Lagrangian method with second order dual updates. The proposed AL-SODU algorithm significantly outperforms state of the art algorithms employing first order dual updates, with 15-times speedup in convergence speed. A case study of the EMS based on AL-SODU is conducted on the Smart Polygeneration Microgrid (SPM) located on the Savona Campus of University of Genova (Italy). The EMS determines the optimal schedules for electric and thermal power plants every 15-minutes. This real time scheduling of the microgrid is enabled by the Al-SODU algorithm, which solves the scheduling problem in 1.86s.