Resource allocation with local QoS: Flexible loads in the power grid

Abstract

Loads that can vary their power consumption without violating their Quality of service (QoS), that is flexible loads, are an invaluable resource for grid operators. Utilizing flexible loads as a resource requires the grid operator to incorporate them into a resource allocation problem. Since flexible loads are often consumers, for concerns of privacy it is desirable for this problem to have a distributed implementation. Technically, this distributed implementation manifests itself as a time varying convex optimization problem constrained by the QoS of each load. In the literature, a time invariant form of this problem without all of the necessary QoS metrics for the flexible loads is often considered. Moving to a more realistic setup introduces additional technical challenges, due to the problems' time-varying nature. In this work, we develop an algorithm to account for the challenges introduced when considering a time varying setup with appropriate QoS metrics.