Piotr Pałka

Electronic Trading on Electricity Markets within a Multi-agent Framework

Specific features of trade on electrical energy markets make the automation of certain negotiation and contracting processes attractive and desirable. Multi-agent systems are a natural solution for automating processes in a distributed environment, where individual market entities posses their own objectives. In the paper we consider a concept of a multi-agent framework for an electronic market trade. Since both energy markets and trade mechanisms are complex and permanently evolving, we require the highest expressiveness from this concept. Development of such a system involves solving several design issues related to embedding the agents in the environment, agent communications schemas, language, and offers modeling, especially in the case of the distributed, multilateral trade. We present a solution for the most important design issues. Our concept, including new information technologies supplementing multi-agent systems and Web services, are capable to support enterprises in the decision processes, to facilitate the buy/sell offers preparation, to select parties and enter into business relations with entities, and to support contract negotiations.

Intelligent Computations in an Agent-Based Prosumer-Type Electric Microgrid Control System

The growing number of small prosumers, progress in construction of the renewable energy sources and opening of the energy markets lead to development of the concept of a microgrid. To increase efficiency of electricity consumption, production, and trading, energy managing systems (EMS) are being developed. In this paper we present a project of a complex EMS that will combine load scheduling, power balancing and smart trading methods to optimize electric energy costs of running a simulated research and education center. We present a concept of a distributed Agent-based Power Balancing System that controls the power flow in a microgrid by decentralized and distributed decision making. The program optimizes the operating (exploitation) cost of the devices in the microgrid by internally balancing, as much as possible, the produced and consumed power and by trading the remaining energy excesses or deficits on the external market. Agents associated with the devices cooperate using communication protocols. Their aim is to use the energy from renewable energy sources whenever it is only available, and at the same time limit use of the energy from the sources that are more expensive and less environment friendly.

Simulation of an uncertain emission market for greenhouse gases using agent-based methods

The paper presents the problem of a simulation of the greenhouse gases emission permits market where only low accuracy emission amounts are known. An organization of the market with uncertain emissions is proposed and trading rules for individual market participants are discussed. Simulation of the market is based on a multi-agent system. Negotiation of purchase/sale prices between the parties are introduced, where the trading parties adopt one of two options: (i) bilateral negotiations, and (ii) sealed bid reverse auctions. Results of simulation runs show trajectories of transaction prices, as well as probability distributions of learning agents’ bidding prices.

Multi-commodity Trade Application to the Routing Algorithm for the Delay and Disruptive Tolerant Networks

The paper considers analysis of the specific routing problem, concerning the delay and disruptive tolerant networks (DTN). Those networks are characterized by their lack of connectivity – there may be no connection between any pair of nodes. Moreover, the nodes are mobile, and the network configuration changes over time. The simulation tool that is used to analyzing particular routing methods is presented. The simulation tool is based on the Multi-commodity Market Model (abbrev. M3 ), and implemented according to the multi-agent programing paradigm [19]. Thus, the paper also describes one of the M3 applications. Moreover, the preliminary results of applied RandomWalk, and Auction-based routing algorithms for the DTN are also presented.

Multilateral negotiations in distributed, multi-agent environment

The paper describes the problem of multilateral negotiations, conducted in a distributed environment. In the multilateral negotiation, more than two partners participate simultaneously. Multilateral negotiation processes are important in the case where objects of the negotiation are bounded with by certain constraints (e.g. physical constraints), or if the participants trade with different bundles of commodities. The commodities structure may then force the necessity of multilateral negotiation. The interaction protocol for the multilateral negotiation, based on FIPAs protocol, is presented. A simple, yet representative example is presented to illustrate the problem. The results of computer simulations of the proposed negotiation process are presented.

Application of an Auction Algorithm in an Agent-Based Power Balancing System

The paper presents an application of an auction algorithm in a computer multi-agent system for managing the unbalanced energy in a microgrid. The main goal of the system is to control and minimize the differences between the current energy demand and the actual energy production, using an auction algorithm. The assumption of distributed generations in the microgrid, which includes renewable power sources, is made. The storages, and the controllable power sources improve the system operation. The differences between the actual demand and generated energy are caused by unpredictable level of electric power generation by uncontrolled sources (mainly wind turbines and solar panels) and/or randomness of power utilization. The system will tend to balance these differences on-line in short time intervals (about one minute) to follow-up the varying level of local power generation and loads.

Information Management in Federated Digital Archives

The chapter describes the problem of resources dislocation among federated archives. In the archive lifetime, the resource can be a subject of format change, relocation, transfer onto another operating system or area, the data carrier can be a subject of magnetic renewal, etc. Some of the operations can be risky, namely the resource can be, in the effect of them, damaged. The federation of archives allows for dislocation of digital resources, i.e. the another method to ensure reliable ability to read it. As the federated archives are usually geographically dispersed, have different operating systems, or storage media, are managed in various ways, the dislocation prevents against the effects of natural disasters, acts of war, etc. The chapter describes acquisition and placement of information about the corresponding resources, archives identification, and communication among the archives. The developed coordination protocol, basing on the state of the art, is described and presented under the assumption, that the archives communicate as they have software agents to communicate with each other. It allows among others, that the archives do not need to be homogeneous. Finally, the implementation proposal of the module responsible for relocation is described.

Persistence Management in Long-Term Digital Archive

The chapter describes the development of persistence management of various data carriers. The goal is to create an abstract system for monitoring and reporting data carriers, providing information about each carrier, a lot of carriers, or area, independently of the carrier type. Further, the abstract system for monitoring solves the problem of lack of appropriate technical solutions for the monitoring and management of many carriers. The approach allows to determine information from which areas to relocate the packages, where they should be relocated, and which areas should be turned on. The information enables the archive to keep high reliability level, and to save the energy.

Large-Scale Periodic Routing Problems for Supporting Planning of Mobile Personnel Tasks

Implementation concepts of a decision support system for large-scale periodic time-dependent vehicle routing and scheduling problems with complex constraints supporting planning and management of mobile personnel tasks (sales representatives and others) are discussed. Complex nonuniform constraints with respect to frequency, time windows, working time, etc. are taken into account with additional fast adaptive procedures for operational rescheduling of plans in presence of various disturbances. Five individual solution quality indicators with respect to a single personnel person are considered. This paper deals with modeling issues corresponding to the problem and general solution concepts.

Persistence Management in Digital Document Repository

The CREDO Digital Document Repository enables short-and long-term archiving of large volumes of digital resources, ensuring bitstream preservation and providing most of the technical means to ensure content preservation of digital resources. The goal of the paper is to describe the design and implementation an innovative component of the CREDO Repository: the Persistence Management Subsystem (PMS). This subsystem sets guidelines for the file management system on replicas placement, and data relocation. The module responsible for scheduling access to the archive provides energy efficiency by setting suboptimal schedules. The module responsible for diagnose and exchange of data carriers calculates the probabilities of failure, and the information is used by the scheduling module to select appropriate storage areas for reading or writing of data, and for marking the areas as obsolete. Finally, the power management module is responsible for starting-up the storage areas only when necessary.