An Introduction to MultiAgent Systems.

In the current era of sustainable development, energy planning has become complex due to the involvement of multiple benchmarks like technical, social, economic and environmental. This in turn puts major constraints for decision makers to optimize energy alternatives independently and discretely especially in case of rural communities. In addition, topographical limitations concerning renewable energy systems which are mostly distributed in nature, the energy planning becomes more complicated. In such cases, decision analysis plays a vital role for designing such systems by considering various criteria and objectives even at disintegrated levels of electrification. Multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) is a branch of operational research dealing with finding optimal results in complex scenarios including various indicators, conflicting objectives and criteria. This tool is becoming popular in the field of energy planning due to the flexibility it provides to the decision makers to take decisions while considering all the criteria and objectives simultaneously. This article develops an insight into various MCDM techniques, progress made by considering renewable energy applications over MCDM methods and future prospects in this area. An extensive review in the sphere of sustainable energy has been performed by utilizing MCDM technique.

A review of multi criteria decision making (MCDM) towards sustainable renewable energy development

Prosumers are agents that both consume and produce energy. With the growth in small and medium-sized agents using solar photovoltaic panels, smart meters, vehicle-to-grid electric automobiles, home batteries and other ‘smart’ devices, prosuming offers the potential for consumers and vehicle owners to re-evaluate their energy practices. As the number of prosumers increases, the electric utility sector of today is likely to undergo significant changes over the coming decades, offering possibilities for greening of the system, but also bringing many unknowns and risks that need to be identified and managed. To develop strategies for the future, policymakers and planners need knowledge of how prosumers could be integrated effectively and efficiently into competitive electricity markets. Here we identify and discuss three promising potential prosumer markets related to prosumer grid integration, peer-to-peer models and prosumer community groups. We also caution against optimism by laying out a series of caveats and complexities.

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Electricity market design for the prosumer era

Appearing in 1st IEEE International Workshop on Sensor Net Protocols and Applications (SNPA). Anchorage, Alaska, USA. May 11, 2003. RMST: Reliable Data Transport in Sensor Networks Fred Stann, John Heidemann Abstract – Reliable data transport in wireless sensor networks is a multifaceted problem influenced by the physical, MAC, network, and transport layers. Because sensor networks are subject to strict resource constraints and are deployed by single organizations, they encourage revisiting traditional layering and are less bound by standardized placement of services such as reliability. This paper presents analysis and experiments resulting in specific recommendations for implementing reliable data transport in sensor nets. To explore reliability at the transport layer, we present RMST (Reliable Multi- Segment Transport), a new transport layer for Directed Diffusion. RMST provides guaranteed delivery and fragmentation/reassembly for applications that require them. RMST is a selective NACK-based protocol that can be configured for in-network caching and repair. Second, these energy constraints, plus relatively low wireless bandwidths, make in-network processing both feasible and desirable [3]. Third, because nodes in sensor networks are usually collaborating towards a common task, rather than representing independent users, optimization of the shared network focuses on throughput rather than fairness. Finally, because sensor networks are often deployed by a single organization with inexpensive hardware, there is less need for interoperability with existing standards. For all of these reasons, sensor networks provide an environment that encourages rethinking the structure of traditional communications protocols. The main contribution is an evaluation of the placement of reliability for data transport at different levels of the protocol stack. We consider implementing reliability in the MAC, transport layer, application, and combinations of these. We conclude that reliability is important at the MAC layer and the transport layer. MAC-level reliability is important not just to provide hop-by-hop error recovery for the transport layer, but also because it is needed for route discovery and maintenance. (This conclusion differs from previous studies in reliability for sensor nets that did not simulate routing. [4]) Second, we have developed RMST (Reliable Multi-Segment Transport), a new transport layer, in order to understand the role of in- network processing for reliable data transfer. RMST benefits from diffusion routing, adding minimal additional control traffic. RMST guarantees delivery, even when multiple hops exhibit very high error rates. 1 Introduction Wireless sensor networks provide an economical, fully distributed, sensing and computing solution for environments where conventional networks are impractical. This paper explores the design decisions related to providing reliable data transport in sensor nets. The reliable data transport problem in sensor nets is multi-faceted. The emphasis on energy conservation in sensor nets implies that poor paths should not be artificially bolstered via mechanisms such as MAC layer ARQ during route discovery and path selection [1]. Path maintenance, on the other hand, benefits from well- engineered recovery either at the MAC layer or the transport layer, or both. Recovery should not be costly however, since many applications in sensor nets are impervious to occasional packet loss, relying on the regular delivery of coarse-grained event descriptions. Other applications require loss detection and repair. These aspects of reliable data transport include the provision of guaranteed delivery and fragmentation/ reassembly of data entities larger than the network MTU. Sensor networks have different constraints than traditional wired nets. First, energy constraints are paramount in sensor networks since nodes can often not be recharged, so any wasted energy shortens their useful lifetime [2]. This work was supported by DARPA under grant DABT63-99-1-0011 as part of the SCAADS project, and was also made possible in part due to support from Intel Corporation and Xerox Corporation. Fred Stann and John Heidemann are with USC/Information Sciences Institute, 4676 Admiralty Way, Marina Del Rey, CA, USA E-mail: fstann@usc.edu, johnh@isi.edu. 2 Architectural Choices There are a number of key areas to consider when engineering reliability for sensor nets. Many current sensor networks exhibit high loss rates compared to wired networks (2% to 30% to immediate neighbors)[1,5,6]. While error detection and correction at the physical layer are important, approaches at the MAC layer and higher adapt well to the very wide range of loss rates seen in sensor networks and are the focus of this paper. MAC layer protocols can ameliorate PHY layer unreliability, and transport layers can guarantee delivery. An important question for this paper is the trade off between implementation of reliability at the MAC layer (i.e. hop to hop) vs. the Transport layer, which has traditionally been concerned with end-to-end reliability. Because sensor net applications are distributed, we also considered implementing reliability at the application layer. Our goal is to minimize the cost of repair in terms of transmission.

RMST: Reliable Data Transport in Sensor Networks

According to the feed-in tariff for encouraging local consumption of photovoltaic (PV) energy, the energy sharing among neighboring PV prosumers in the microgrid could be more economical than the independent operation of prosumers. For microgrids of peer-to-peer PV prosumers, an energy-sharing model with price-based demand response is proposed. First, a dynamical internal pricing model is formulated for the operation of energy-sharing zone, which is defined based on the supply and demand ratio (SDR) of shared PV energy. Moreover, considering the energy consumption flexibility of prosumers, an equivalent cost model is designed in terms of economic cost and users’ willingness. As the internal prices are coupled with SDR in the microgrid, the algorithm and implementation method for solving the model is designed on a distributed iterative way. Finally, through a practical case study, the effectiveness of the method is verified in terms of saving PV prosumers’ costs and improving the sharing of the PV energy.

Energy-Sharing Model With Price-Based Demand Response for Microgrids of Peer-to-Peer Prosumers

Smart Grid (SG) achieves bidirectional energy and information flow between the energy user and the utility grid, allowing energy users not only to consume energy, but also to generate the energy and share with the utility grid or with other energy consumers. This type of energy user who consumes energy and who also can generate the energy is called the “prosumer”. The sustainability of the SG energy sharing process heavily depends on its participating prosumers, making prosumer participation and management schemes crucial within the energy sharing approaches. However in literature, there is very little attention on prosumer management schemes. The contribution of this article is twofold. First, this article introduces a novel concept of participating and managing the prosumers in the SG energy sharing process in the form of autonomous, intelligent goal-oriented virtual communities. Here, the community of prosumers can collectively increase the amount of power to be auctioned or bought offering higher bargaining power, thereby settling for a higher price per kilowatt in long-term. According to the literature, this research is the first of this type introducing a community approach for prosumer management. The initial step to build an effective prosumer-community is the identification of those prosumers who would be suitable to make efficient prosumer communities. This leads the necessity of identifying parameters that influence the energy sharing behaviours of prosumers. The second contribution of this article is that, this comprehensively analyzes the different parameters influencing the prosumer's energy sharing behaviours and thus presents multi-agent architecture for optimal prosumer-community formation.

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Identifying prosumer's energy sharing behaviours for forming optimal prosumer-communities

Energy demand is continually rising, worldwide. Most of the current demand is met by non-renewable energy sources, like coal, petroleum, and natural gas. However, currently, society is faced with the problem of dwindling and scarce non-renewable energy resources, resulting in a shortage of energy. Moreover, the process of energy production from non-renewable sources is increasing greenhouse gas emissions, leading to unpleasant and potentially dangerous climatic changes. Therefore, in today?s world, the focus is on inducing users to reduce their household energy consumption, and shift to using energy produced from renewable sources, such as solar, water, and wind. Not only this, but users are being encouraged to generate the green energy, and to either store the surplus for future usage or to feed it back into the utility grid. In order to evolve such bidirectional energy and information flow, the concept of the smart-grid has been proposed [1].

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Goal-Oriented Prosumer Community Groups for the Smart Grid

Review: Wireless Sensor Network transport protocol: A critical review

Smart grids have created an emerging entity of “prosumer” in the energy value network who not only consumes energy but also generates and shares the green energy with the utility grid. Hence, effective management of prosumers has become pivotal to ensure a long-term, sustainable energy-sharing process. Recently, the concept of a Prosumer Community Group (PCG) has emerged as one of the most promising and effective ways to manage prosumers. However, developing sustainable PCGs is challenging. One of the key challenges in this regard is to assess the contribution made by individual prosumers of a PCG, and find a subset of the most influential prosumers whose behavior would facilitate the long-term sustainability of the PCG. In this paper, we have focused on this challenge and proposed an innovative methodology to assess and rank the prosumers, in order to build an influential membership base. We have assessed the long-term and short-term energy behaviors of prosumers based on multiple evaluation criteria and accordingly decided the ranks of the prosumers, whereby the higher ranked prosumers are deemed to be more influential in enhancing the long-term sustenance of the PCG. Furthermore, we have presented simulation results to verify our proposed methodology. The current literature on smart-grid research field has no work investigating this challenge, making our contribution novel.

A Methodology to Find Influential Prosumers in Prosumer Community Groups

Introduction of Wireless Home Automation (WHA) has become a positive inspiration to the new home and renovation projects, as it increases the quality of life and comfort of the inhabitants, simultaneously facilitating energy conservation and environmental sustainability. Generally WHA networks comprise of wireless embedded sensors and actuators that intelligently interconnect with each other through a suitable wireless architecture. Many wireless technologies have been emerged recently targeting WHA, hence selecting the optimal technology is challenging. In this article, we present an evaluation of these emerging wireless technologies and discuss their suitability for smart home networks.

A. J. Dinusha Rathnayaka

Papers

Identifying prosumer's energy sharing behaviours for forming optimal prosumer-communities

Goal-Oriented Prosumer Community Groups for the Smart Grid

Review: Wireless Sensor Network transport protocol: A critical review

A Methodology to Find Influential Prosumers in Prosumer Community Groups

Evaluation of wireless home automation technologies