Peak-Power-Demand Limitation through Independent Consumer Coordination

The allocation of resources to competing entities is a significant problem in various applications areas. There are many examples of situations in which it is necessary to impose a global constraint limiting the total quantities of resources available to individual consumers while there is no global objective to govern the distribution. The problem of limiting peak demand for power among loosely related buildings such as those on a college campus provides an example application. The individual objective performances of some loosely coupled independent buildings can be improved if resources can be exchanged, but such exchange becomes difficult if resource exchanges are required to balance. Since the buildings are independent, the exchange of resources may be required to occur without compromising this independence. A mechanism is presented to support resource exchanges among independent users while assuring that the average resource exchanged remains at zero and the autonomy of the individual users is retained. The presented mechanism uses a simplified form of barter to eliminate the need for gaming in certain cases.