Agent-based modeling of smart-grid market operations

The vision of the Smart Grid includes the creation of intelligent electricity supply networks to allow efficient use of energy resources, reduce carbon emissions and increase robustness to failures. One of the key assumptions underlying this vision is that it will be possible to manage the trading of electricity between the numerous active parties within the grid. These parties may include or represent such diverse entities as individual users, homes, commercial consumers, micro-grids, virtual power plants (VPPs), energy collectives (ECs), energy suppliers and power generators. The management of these trades needs to take into account the fact that most, if not all, of the actors in the system are self-interested, and cannot be expected to co-operate without incentives. To further complicate matters, there are numerous sources of unpredictability and constraining factors, such as line capacity, availability of renewable and non-renewable resources, inconsistent user behaviour and the inherent real-time dynamism in electricity demand and supply. We develop and evaluate several novel mechanisms for the Smart Grid, in particular an efficient, market-based mechanism and novel trading strategies for the Smart Grid, an agent based approach to studying the impact of the widespread adoption of electricity storage and decentralised control methods for energy suppliers and consumers to manage micro-storage devices.