Power Load Management as a Computational Market

Second International Conference on Multiagent Systems

Volume

Second International Conference on Multiagent Systems

Contents

Power load management enables energy utilities to reduce peak loads and thereby save money. Due to the large number of different loads, power load management is a complicated optimization problem. We present a new decentralized approach to this problem by modeling direct load management as a computational market. Our simulation results demonstrate that our approach is very efficient with a superlinear rate of convergence to equilibrium and an excellent scalability, requiring few iterations even when the number of agents is in the order of one thousand. A framework for analysis of this and similar problems is given which shows how nonlinear optimization and numerical mathematics can be exploited to characterize, compare, and tailor problem-solving strategies in market-oriented programming.