Hierarchical and dynamic coordination of the network

Once the network is divided into cells and each one's flexibility measured, the question that decides the outcome remains: how those cells coordinate with one another. Each optimises locally, with its own information and its own horizon. Nothing guarantees that the sum of those decisions serves the grid; it may equally move a peak from one feeder to another, or set the system oscillating between two equilibria.

This project assesses the dynamics of wider networks by accounting for interactions between cells and their contribution to overall performance. The work is to establish at which level a decision belongs, which information must travel upward and which can stay local, and how often the levels should speak to each other — knowing that coordination which is too tight costs in communication what it gains in optimality.

Main objective

Assess the dynamics of wide networks by considering interactions between aggregations, and determine how decisions and information exchange are distributed across the levels of the hierarchy.

Methodology

Formulating inter-level coordination as a distributed optimisation problem; analysing the convergence and stability of exchanges between cells; studying the trade-off between solution optimality and communication load; evaluation on networks of increasing size, from a single feeder to a complete distribution network.