The need for an agent arbitration approach for coordinated control in active power networks

One vision of future network management systems is that they will comprise of many heterogeneous (i.e. different agentified single-function active management solutions) cooperating intelligent agents each with disparate control functionality for different network control and management tasks. This leads to the need for arbitration between potentially conflicting sets of control actions suggested by multiple single-function intelligent agents that could be responsible for voltage control, power flow management and restoration. This paper reviews the potential for an arbitration layer to detect and offer appropriate arbitration decisions in the presence of conflicting control objectives in a suitable time scale. A control problem formulation within an active distribution network is described, with emphasis on the role of Multi-Agent System technology as a systems integration platform for multiple active management solutions. The paper also describes the fundamental concepts and challenge of an agent arbitration layer within the field of Multi-Agent Systems that is appropriate for conflict resolution in active distribution system control. Finally, the requirements for the development of the intelligent agent control framework are described, presenting views on the algorithm requirements of the distributed control concept.