Zonally Robust Decentralized Optimization for Global Energy Interconnection: Case Study on Northeast Asian Countries

Nowadays, the entire world is facing challenges in energy and environment. To resolve these problems, the power systems are interconnected to promote the development of renewable energy sources (RESs). However, the economic dispatch (ED) problem for the global energy interconnection (GEI) should tackle two issues: 1) handle the uncertainty from RES and allocate the responsibility among the interconnected countries and 2) protect the information privacy through the dispatch. Motivated by the above, this article proposes a zonally adjustable robust decentralized ED model for the GEI. In the model, each country is only responsible for its own uncertainty, and tie-line power flows remain unchanged under uncertainties. Moreover, an alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM)-based fully distributed algorithm is used, in which only limited information should be exchanged between neighboring countries. Finally, a case study on the Northeast Asian countries verifies the effectiveness of the proposed method. Note to Practitioners—Since the renewable energy generation has a spatial correlation among regional countries, global energy interconnection (GEI) aims to combine several power systems together to promote the renewable energy accommodation. However, two problems need to be considered: 1) Information Privacy: The information privacy of the power system in each country should be preserved, which prevents the GEI from conducting a centralized optimal dispatch framework and 2) Uncertainty: The uncertain output of renewable energy resources brings challenge to the power system secure operation. The main contribution of this article is to set up a zonally robust decentralized optimization for the GEI, where the zonally robust economic dispatch (ED) is conducted by the area control error (ACE) system to manage the difference between scheduled and actual generation under the uncertainties, and the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMMs) algorithm is adopted for decentralizing the zonally adjustable robust ED model, which only needs limited information. In particular, this article uses a real-world example from Northeast Asian Countries to help engineers understand the advantages of the GEI and the new dispatch framework.