Non-cooperative Operation of Transmission and Distribution Systems

The increased penetration of distributed energy resources (DERs) has enhanced the importance of coordinated operation of transmission system operator (TSO) and distribution system operators (DSOs) in order to better exploit DERs. When TSO and DSOs coordinately operate to optimize overall performance of the system, it does not ensure that the benefit is attained by all participants. To ensure entering TSO and DSOs as subjective and self-interested agents' coordinated operation, this article introduces a non-cooperative framework for coordinated operation of TSO and DSOs. In the proposed non-cooperative operation approach, TSO and DSOs are considered as subjective agents whose interest is to optimize their own objective functions selfishly while they are interactive and modify their solutions through exchanged boundary signals until the equilibrium is obtained. The effectiveness of the proposed non-cooperative operation approach has been demonstrated through many studies on two integrated test systems. Comparison of simulation results of applying the proposed non-cooperative approach with those of the cooperative ones demonstrates that although the optimal solution is achieved for the whole system in the cooperative operation, some agents cannot obtain a satisfactory solution. Thus, these agents prefer to enter a non-cooperative game with other agents. The proposed non-cooperative game leads to relative benefits for all agents.