Agent-Based Privacy Preserving Transactive Control for Managing Peak Power Consumption

Many communities, such as college campuses, purchase electricity at a rate that includes a peak demand charge (averaged over 15-minute intervals). Energy cost reduction and demand response require actively managing the peak demand. In this paper, we develop transactive control mechanisms that enable buildings in an active distribution system or microgrid to cooperatively manage peak demand. A decentralized transactive control (DTC) approach is designed based on a novel decomposition algorithm that preserves the detailed load profile and information. By directly solving a mixed integer linear program, the scalable algorithm determines the optimal or near-optimal operating point for the system. Selected buildings on a real-world campus are used to evaluate the proposed platform. The results show the peak demand can be dramatically reduced while maintaining the largest possible building energy revenue.