  Greater penetration of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) in power networks
requires coordination strategies that allow for self-adjustment of
contributions in a network of DERs, owing to variability in generation and
demand. In this article, a distributed scheme is proposed that enables a DER in
a network to arrive at viable power reference commands that satisfies the DERs
local constraints on its generation and loads it has to service, while, the
aggregated behavior of multiple DERs in the network and their respective loads
meet the ancillary services demanded by the grid. The Net-load Management
system for a single unit is referred to as the Local Inverter System (LIS) in
this article . A distinguishing feature of the proposed consensus based
solution is the distributed finite time termination of the algorithm that
allows each LIS unit in the network to determine power reference commands in
the presence of communication delays in a distributed manner. The proposed
scheme allows prioritization of Renewable Energy Sources (RES) in the network
and also enables auto-adjustment of contributions from LIS units with lower
priority resources (non-RES). The methods are validated using
hardware-in-the-loop simulations with Raspberry PI devices as distributed
control units, implementing the proposed distributed algorithm and responsible
for determining and dispatching realtime power reference commands to simulated
power electronics interface emulating LIS units for demand response.
