Applications of Agent-Based Methods in Multi-Energy Systems—A Systematic Literature Review

The need for a greener and more sustainable energy system evokes a need for more extensive energy system transition research. The penetration of distributed energy resources and Internet of Things technologies facilitate energy system transition towards the next generation of energy system concepts. The next generation of energy system concepts include “integrated energy system”, “multi-energy system”, or “smart energy system”. These concepts reveal that future energy systems can integrate multiple energy carriers with autonomous intelligent decision making. There are noticeable trends in using the agent-based method in research of energy systems, including multi-energy system transition simulation with agent-based modeling (ABM) and multi-energy system management with multi-agent system (MAS) modeling. The need for a comprehensive review of the applications of the agent-based method motivates this review article. Thus, this article aims to systematically review the ABM and MAS applications in multi-energy systems with publications from 2007 to the end of 2021. The articles were sorted into MAS and ABM applications based on the details of agent implementations. MAS application papers in building energy systems, district energy systems, and regional energy systems are reviewed with regard to energy carriers, agent control architecture, optimization algorithms, and agent development environments. ABM application papers in behavior simulation and policy-making are reviewed with regard to the agent decision-making details and model objectives. In addition, the potential future research directions in reinforcement learning implementation and agent control synchronization are highlighted. The review shows that the agent-based method has great potential to contribute to energy transition studies with its plug-and-play ability and distributed decision-making process

A Review of Platforms for the Development of Agent Systems

Agent-based computing is an active field of research with the goal of building autonomous software of hardware entities. This task is often facilitated by the use of dedicated, specialized frameworks. For almost thirty years, many such agent platforms have been developed. Meanwhile, some of them have been abandoned, others continue their development and new platforms are released. This paper presents a up-to-date review of the existing agent platforms and also a historical perspective of this domain. It aims to serve as a reference point for people interested in developing agent systems. This work details the main characteristics of the included agent platforms, together with links to specific projects where they have been used. It distinguishes between the active platforms and those no longer under development or with unclear status. It also classifies the agent platforms as general purpose ones, free or commercial, and specialized ones, which can be used for particular types of applications.Comment: 40 pages, 2 figures, 9 tables, 83 reference

Agent-based simulation of electricity markets: a literature review

Liberalisation, climate policy and promotion of renewable energy are challenges to players of the electricity sector in many countries. Policy makers have to consider issues like market power, bounded rationality of players and the appearance of fluctuating energy sources in order to provide adequate legislation. Furthermore the interactions between markets and environmental policy instruments become an issue of increasing importance. A promising approach for the scientific analysis of these developments is the field of agent-based simulation. The goal of this article is to provide an overview of the current work applying this methodology to the analysis of electricity markets. --

Organization of Multi-Agent Systems: An Overview

In complex, open, and heterogeneous environments, agents must be able to reorganize towards the most appropriate organizations to adapt unpredictable environment changes within Multi-Agent Systems (MAS). Types of reorganization can be seen from two different levels. The individual agents level (micro-level) in which an agent changes its behaviors and interactions with other agents to adapt its local environment. And the organizational level (macro-level) in which the whole system changes it structure by adding or removing agents. This chapter is dedicated to overview different aspects of what is called MAS Organization including its motivations, paradigms, models, and techniques adopted for statically or dynamically organizing agents in MAS.Comment: 12 page

Consumer behavior modeling for electrical energy systems : a complex systems approach

Orientador: Alexandre Rasi AokiCoorientador: Germano Lambert-TorresTese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal do Paraná, Setor de Tecnologia, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Engenharia Elétrica. Defesa : Curitiba, 27/02/2019Inclui referências: p. 141-154Resumo: Um sistema complexo é um sistema composto de muitas partes que interagem entre si, de modo que o comportamento coletivo emergente dessas partes é mais do que a soma de seus comportamentos individuais. O sistema elétrico de potência pode ser considerado um sistema complexo devido à sua diversidade de agentes heterogêneos inter-relacionados e a emergência de comportamento complexo. Sistemas de potência estão aumentando em complexidade com novos avanços relacionados à redes elétricas inteligentes tais como tecnologia de informação e comunicação, geração distribuída, veículos elétricos, armazenamento de energia e, especialmente, uma crescente interação e participação de um grande número de consumidores heterogêneos dispersos geograficamente. O sistema elétrico de potência pode ser estudado como um sistema técnico-socioeconômico complexo com múltiplas facetas, e a teoria de sistemas complexos pode fornecer uma base teórica sólida para seus desafios de modelagem e análise. O presente trabalho trata da aplicação da teoria de sistemas complexos em sistemas de potência, focando a análise no consumidor e no seu comportamento relacionado ao consumo de eletricidade, utilizando técnicas do campo da economia comportamental. Comportamentos complexos e emergentes sobre o consumo de eletricidade, bem como seu impacto nas redes elétricas, são analisados através da modelagem do comportamento dos cliente em uma simulação baseada em agentes, considerando quatro categorias de consumidores. A análise da simulação, aplicada a um estudo de caso em uma rede de distribuição de média tensão radial com dados reais, mostrou que premissas ligeiramente diferentes sobre o comportamento do consumidor no nível micro levam a resultados macro muito distintos e com comportamento não linear. Entender e modelar adequadamente o comportamento dos consumidores é de grande importância para o planejamento e operação de redes de energia, e a economia comportamental serve como uma base teórica promissora para modelar o comportamento no consumo de eletricidade. Os resultados deste trabalho mostraram que a teorias de sistemas complexos fornece ferramentas adequadas para lidar com sistemas de potência cada vez mais complexos, considerando-os não mais como um sistema independente agregado, mas como um sistema complexo integrado. Palavras-chave: distribuição de energia; consumo de eletricidade; teoria de sistemas complexos; simulação baseada em agentes; economia comportamental.Abstract: A complex system is a system composed of many interacting parts, such that the collective emergent behavior of those parts is more than the sum of their individual behaviors. Electrical energy systems may be considered a complex system due to its diversity of interrelated heterogeneous agents and emergent complex behavior. Energy systems are increasing in complexity with new advances related to the smart grid such as information and communication technology, distributed generation, electric vehicles, energy storage, and, especially, increasing interaction and participation of a large number of geographically distributed heterogeneous consumers. Power systems can be studied as a complex techno-socio-economical system with multiple facets, and Complex System Theory (CST) may provide a solid theoretical background for these modeling and analysis challenges. The present work deals with the application of CST into electrical energy systems, focusing the analysis on the consumer and their behavior on electricity consumption, using insights from the field of behavioral economics. Emergent complex behaviors on electricity consumption as well as its impact on power grids are analyzed by modeling customer behavior on an agent-based simulation, considering four different consumer categories. The analysis of the simulation, applied on a case study on a radial medium voltage distribution grid with real-world data, showed that slightly different assumptions on consumer behavior at the micro-level lead to very different and non-linear macro outcomes. To properly understand and model consumer behavior is of great importance to the planning and operation of electrical grids, and behavioral economics serves as a promising theoretical background to model behavior on electricity consumption. The results of this work showed that CST provides suitable tools to tackle electrical energy systems' increasing complexity, by considering the electrical power systems not as an aggregated independent system anymore, but as an integrated complex system. Keywords: power distribution; electricity consumption; complex systems theory; agent-based simulation; behavioral economics

A Semantic Agent Framework for Cyber-Physical Systems

The development of accurate models for cyber-physical systems (CPSs) is hampered by the complexity of these systems, fundamental differences in the operation of cyber and physical components, and significant interdependencies among these components. Agent-based modeling shows promise in overcoming these challenges, due to the flexibility of software agents as autonomous and intelligent decision-making components. Semantic agent systems are even more capable, as the structure they provide facilitates the extraction of meaningful content from the data provided to the software agents. In this book chapter, we present a multi-agent model for a CPS, where the semantic capabilities are underpinned by sensor networks that provide information about the physical operation to the cyber infrastructure. As a specific example of the semantic interpretation of raw sensor data streams, we present a failure detection ontology for an intelligent water distribution network as a model CPS. The ontology represents physical entities in the CPS, as well as the information extraction, analysis and processing that takes place in relation to these entities. The chapter concludes with introduction of a semantic agent framework for CPS, and presentation of a sample implementation of the framework using C++