As future energy systems become more decentralised due to the integration of renewable energy resources and storage technologies, several autonomous energy management and peer-to-peer trading mechanisms have been recently proposed for the operation of energy hub networks based on optimization and game theory. However, most of these strategies have been tested either only in simulated environments or small prosumer units as opposed to larger energy hubs. This simulation reality gap has hindered large-scale implementation and practical application of these method. In this paper, we aim to experimentally validate the performance of a novel multi-horizon distributed model predictive controller for an energy hub network by implementing the controller on a complete network of hubs comprising of a real energy hub inter-faced with multiple virtual hubs. The experiments are done using two different network topologies and the controller shows promising results in both setups.

翻译：随着可再生能源和储能技术的集成，未来能源系统日益分散化，基于优化与博弈论的多种自主能源管理及点对点交易机制近期被提出，用于能源枢纽网络的运行。然而，大多数策略仅在模拟环境或小型产消者单元中测试，而非面向规模更大的能源枢纽。这种模拟与现实之间的差距阻碍了这些方法的大规模实施与工程应用。本文旨在通过将控制器部署至包含真实能源枢纽与多个虚拟枢纽的完整枢纽网络，实验验证一种新型多时域分布式模型预测控制器在能源枢纽网络中的性能。实验采用两种不同网络拓扑结构，该控制器在两种场景下均展现出优异结果。