An agent-based market platform for Smart Grids

The trend towards renewable, decentralized, and highly fluctuating energy suppliers (e.g. photovoltaic, wind power, CHP) introduces a tremendous burden on the stability of future power grids. By adding sophisticated ICT and intelligent devices, various Smart Grid initiatives work on concepts for intelligent power meters, peak load reductions, efficient balancing mechanisms, etc. As in the Smart Grid scenario data is inherently distributed over different, often non-cooperative parties, mechanisms for efficient coordination of the suppliers, consumers and intermediators is required in order to ensure global functioning of the power grid. In this paper, a highly flexible market platform is introduced for coordinating self-interested energy agents representing power suppliers, customers and prosumers. These energy agents implement a generic bidding strategy that can be governed by local policies. These policies declaratively represent user preferences or constraints of the devices controlled by the agent. Efficient coordination between the agents is realized through a market mechanism that incentivizes the agents to reveal their policies truthfully to the market. By knowing the agent’s policies, an efficient solution for the overall system can be determined. As proof of concept implementation the market platform D’ACCORD is presented that supports various market structures ranging from a single local energy exchange to a hierarchical energy market structure (e.g. as proposed in [10]).