Multi-Agent Decision Support Tool to Enable Interoperability among Heterogeneous Energy Systems

Abstract

Worldwide electricity markets are undergoing a major restructuring process. One of the main reasons for the ongoing changes is to enable the adaptation of current market models to the new paradigm that arises from the large-scale integration of distributed generation sources. In order to deal with the unpredictability caused by the intermittent nature of the distributed generation and the large number of variables that contribute to the energy sector balance, it is extremely important to use simulation systems that are capable of dealing with the required complexity. This paper presents the Tools Control Center (TOOCC), a framework that allows the interoperability between heterogeneous energy and power simulation systems through the use of ontologies, allowing the simulation of scenarios with a high degree of complexity, through the cooperation of the individual capacities of each system. A case study based on real data is presented in order to demonstrate the interoperability capabilities of TOOCC. The simulation considers the energy management of a microgrid of a real university campus, from the perspective of the network manager and also of its consumers/producers, in a projection for a typical day of the winter of 2050.

The Application of Ontologies in Multi-Agent Systems in the Energy Sector: A Scoping Review

“…In a MAS, complete knowledge about the system is not required, but each agent in the system acts autonomously toward some predefined objectives to optimize the system performance [128]. Therefore, agents have possibilities to represent different market participants, network components, or systems [9]. The agents' individual goals decide the agents' behaviors, e.g., either cooperate or compete with other agents [127].…”

“…Based on the text mining in the analysis software NVivo (https://www.qsrinternational.com/nvivo/ home) and careful review, the 24 articles were separated into six sub-domains (shown in Table 2). Majority of the selected articles only address one sub-domain, and one article [8] addresses three sub-domains (energy management, microgrid, and buildings), and another article [9] addresses two sub-domains (power system and microgrid). The publications show that the application of ontologies in the field of MAS for the energy domain was mainly conducted after the year 2004, with focus on the sub-domain of grid control between 2004 to 2014, and expanded into the sub-domain of electricity market since 2014.…”

“…In a MAS of the energy system, agents can represent market players, network components, or part of/a whole system [9]. Therefore, the multi-agent architecture of energy and power systems is designed for dealing with the system complexity [9,23]. Meanwhile, multi-agent simulations allow investigating the statics and changes of the physical systems, electricity market and market players' behaviors.…”

“…The messages built under the ACL structure allow the definition of various elements (e.g., performative, sender, receiver, content, language, and ontology, among others) and various communicative acts (e.g., agree, cancel, confirm, not-understood, etc.) [9]. Meanwhile, the correct interpretation of the meaning of the message is assured, the ambiguity is removed about the content [21].…”

“…The mapping between ontologies can take much work [104], and there are several ontology mapping tools available [105]. Among the selected literature, ontology mapping is discussed and presented in [9,21,49,91].…”