Privacy-preserving distributed frequency control for AC microgrids with constrained communication.

Area of Science:

• Electrical Engineering
• Control Systems
• Cybersecurity

Background:

• Distributed control is prevalent in islanded AC microgrids, but existing methods often neglect privacy and assume ideal communication.
• Privacy breaches and communication constraints pose significant challenges to the reliable operation of AC microgrids.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a novel privacy-preserving distributed secondary frequency control strategy for islanded AC microgrids.
• To address the limitations of existing methods by incorporating privacy protection and handling constrained communication environments.

Main Methods:

• A time-varying function is introduced to mask interactive information, preventing frequency reconstruction by attackers.
• An event-triggered communication scheme is implemented to manage constrained communication environments effectively.
• A distributed event-triggered control strategy is developed, accounting for communication delays to ensure microgrid stability.

Main Results:

• The proposed strategy effectively preserves privacy by masking critical operational data.
• The event-triggered approach significantly reduces communication load compared to traditional methods.
• The control strategy guarantees frequency restoration and active power sharing under bounded communication delays.

Conclusions:

• The developed strategy offers a robust solution for privacy-preserving distributed control in islanded AC microgrids.
• The findings demonstrate the feasibility of implementing secure and efficient control in microgrids with communication constraints.
• The analysis of communication delay provides valuable insights for practical microgrid deployment.