Modeling of Dynamic Pricing of Energy for a Smart Grid Using a Multi-agent Framework
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Abstract
The use of smart grids is being promoted to address issues such as energy independence, global warming and emergency resilience. A smart grid is a digitized form of the power grid and is comprised of an intelligent monitoring system that keeps track of the two-way digital communications in the system. A multi-agent system is a collection of interacting intelligent agents that can be used in problem solving for systems that are difficult or impossible to be solved by an individual agent. Applications of multi-agent systems can range from transportation, logistics, graphics, networking and mobile technologies to modeling real world scenarios to achieve automatic and dynamic load balancing, pricing, and disaster response. The goal of this project was to design and implement a multi-agent system to model dynamic pricing of electricity in a smart grid, thereby improving the overall efficiency of electricity consumption in a real world scenario. This project was accomplished by devising and implementing a multi-agent system for regulating automatic and dynamic pricing of electricity by monitoring power consumption periods and rising or falling prices accordingly. The system developed has the capability of rising and lowering the prices of electricity based on the availability of electricity from energy sources. This system will depict how much energy the consumers are using and how much it is actually costing them. We believe that the logistics analyzed above will help energy-consumption utilities and consumers to make better energy-efficient decisions.