Multi-Objective Power Distribution Operations: Characterizing Conflict and System Volatility

Abstract

With the rapid proliferation of distributed energy resources and advancement in sensing and control, deploying advanced applications has become crucial for power distribution operations to achieve resilience, economy, decarbonization, and other system mandates. However, conflicts can arise when multiple applications attempt to control the same devices, potentially leading to oscillatory system behavior and suboptimal performance. This paper aims to characterize conflicts and measure the resulting system performance through relevant metrics when applying various deconfliction solution techniques. First, we introduce a conflict matrix that comprehensively registers the conflicts between different applications. Next, we propose a novel metric to quantify the severity of conflicts, facilitating their prioritization and resolution. Finally, we quantify application success and system volatility after different techniques have been applied to resolve conflict. Three competing applications, namely resilience, decarbonization, and conservation voltage reduction, are considered to showcase potential conflicts. Two deconfliction solution techniques, exclusivity and compromise, are implemented, and their impacts on the apps’ performance are evaluated using a modified IEEE 123-bus model as the demonstration test system. Applying the derived conflict metric and relevant volatility metrics provides a quantitative assessment of the system’s performance and the impact of conflicting setpoints.

Keywords

• Advanced distribution operations
• conflicts
• deconfliction
• power system management
• solution design
• volatility