Power Grid Clock Synchronization Optimization Based on Stackelberg Game Theory

Clock synchronization, as the fundamental service in the power grid, provides a unified time standard for all kinds of power services, such as metering, controlling, and scheduling. Since massive new energy devices are connected to the power grid, they bring new demands for differentiated synchronization accuracy and dynamic access synchronization. Considering the limited communication resources of the power grid, we propose a master–slave clock synchronization method based on the two-layer Stackedberg game to satisfy the synchronization demand by diverse devices as much as possible. First, the master station dynamically prices users based on the required synchronization accuracy and the number of synchronous devices, creating a game process between users. Secondly, an iterative algorithm for solving game equilibrium is designed. Finally, the simulation results are given in MATLAB to prove that the proposed method can converge quickly and dynamically adjust allocation according to user demand. Furthermore, the network simulator Mininet and the open-source software-defined network framework Ryu are used to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. Compared with the bandwidth reservation scheme, our proposed method is more suitable for differentiated clock synchronization of resource-limited new energy power networks. This paper investigates the impact of network capacity changes on the clock synchronization accuracy of user equipment in power networks for the first time. Then, a two-layer Stackedberg game model has emerged to achieve optimal bandwidth allocation in the network and improve clock synchronization accuracy. Simulation results show that our method can not only meet the differentiated clock synchronization requirements but also achieve the optimal allocation in dynamic access scenarios.