Pinning Decision in Interconnected Systems with Communication Disruptions under Multi-Agent Distributed Control Topology

In this study, we propose a decision-making strategy for pinning-based distributed multi-agent (PDMA) automatic generation control (AGC) in islanded microgrids against stochastic communication disruptions. The target microgrid is construed as a cyber-physical system, wherein the physical microgrid is modeled as an inverter-interfaced autonomous grid with detailed system dynamic formulation, and the communication network topology is regarded as a cyber-system independent of its physical connection. The primal goal of the proposed method is to decide the minimum number of generators to be pinned and their identities amongst all distributed generators (DGs). The pinning-decisions are made based on complex network theories using the genetic algorithm (GA), for the purpose of synchronizing and regulating the frequencies and voltages of all generator bus-bars in a PDMA control structure, i.e., without resorting to a central AGC agent. Thereafter, the mapping of cyber-system topology and the pinning decision is constructed using deep-learning (DL) technique, so that the pinning-decision can be made nearly instantly upon detecting a new cyber-system topology after stochastic communication disruptions. The proposed decision-making approach is verified using a 10-generator, 38-bus microgrid through time-domain simulation for transient stability analysis. Simulations show that the proposed pinning decision making method can achieve robust frequency control with minimum number of active communication channels.