The microgrid is widely recognized as a promising concept for integrating distributed energy resources (DERs). Considering the enormous number of DERs, the future smart grid will likely be a grid containing a number of interconnected microgrids. Thus, the optimal power flow (OPF) problem should be studied by properly taking account of the coupling between the microgrids. In this paper, the models of standalone microgrid and coupled microgrids are formulated first. Then, a decentralized approach is shown in detail to cooperatively solve the coupled OPF problem. Specifically, each microgrid solves the local OPF problem, leading to the optimal solution of the coupled OPF problem via negotiation between microgrids. The privacy of each microgrid is also preserved since no sensitive information is shared between microgrids. Finally, simulation results show that the optimality gaps between the proposed approach and an existing solver are small for both the AC OPF and the DC OPF. Furthermore, the total cost of the microgrids is reduced by the cooperative OPF.

中文翻译：

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通过协商实现多个互联微电网的分散合作最优潮流

微电网被广泛认为是整合分布式能源（DER）的有前途的概念。考虑到大量的DER，未来的智能电网将很可能是一个包含许多相互连接的微电网的电网。因此，应该通过适当考虑微电网之间的耦合来研究最优潮流（OPF）问题。本文首先建立了独立微电网模型和耦合微电网模型。然后，详细展示了一种分散的方法来协同解决耦合的OPF问题。具体而言，每个微电网都解决了局部OPF问题，从而通过微电网之间的协商来最终解决耦合OPF问题。由于没有在微电网之间共享敏感信息，因此每个微电网的隐私也得以保留。最后，仿真结果表明，对于AC OPF和DC OPF而言，所提方法与现有求解器之间的最优间隙都较小。此外，通过协作OPF降低了微电网的总成本。