Multi Agent System Application for Electrical Load Shedding Management: Experiment in Senegal Power Grid

This paper proposes a multi-agent approach for power grid load shedding programming. Known as the most complex machine ever made by man, power grid is an essential pillar of all national economies. Its complexity and size make it vulnerable. Load shedding is usually an emergency control process against electrical networks with low production capacity. In this study, a system named MASLA, a Multi Agent System based Load Shedding Algorithm, which explores the load shedding planning is proposed. In electrical distribution system, power is delivered to customers through feeders which are a combination of electrical lines and medium voltage transformer substations. Depending on its power, a feeder may serve very large number of customers of different types (industrial, residential, …). Hence, Feeder Agent and Load Agent are defined in a power grid and a negotiation takes place between them, considering customer’s level of priority to select which one will be significantly impacted in a possible emergency outage. The model is implemented using a multi agent platform and a case study using the Senegalese power grid revealed that the proposed approach is useful and feasible for companies facing frequent disruption of electricity supply.