Adaptive Routing Algorithm for Information Management in Distributed Microgrids in Smart Grid

The increasing affordability of renewable energy resources is inspiring new interest in smart management techniques for the power grid. This paper presents an adaptive routing algorithm technique based on distributed dual-gradient update for facilitating communication among distributed energy resources (DER) units in smart grid. In particular, we consider the optimal message routing as a minimum cost flow problem among DER units in the network. The proposed technique employs a multi-commodity flow optimization, with the aim of minimizing the communication cost against network performances indicators such as throughput and delay. The results show that the proposed technique is able to route messages across the network in fewer processing steps than minimum spanning tree algorithm without any message drop. The algorithm is investigated for mesh, partial mesh and ring networks, with the result consistently showing potential cost savings and reduced complexity which can save significant amount of time when applied to a larger system.