MATREM: An Agent-Based Simulation Tool for Electricity Markets

This chapter presents the key features of an agent-based simulation tool, called MATREM (for Multi-Agent TRading in Electricity Markets). The tool allows the user to conduct a wide range of simulations regarding the behavior and outcomes of electricity markets (EMs), including markets with large penetrations of renewable energy. In each simulation, different autonomous software agents are used to capture the heterogeneity of EMs, notably generating companies (GenCos), retailers (RetailCos), aggregators, consumers, market operators (MOs) and system operators (SOs). The agents are essentially computer systems capable of flexible, autonomous action and able to interact, when appropriate, with other agents to meet their design objectives. They are able to generate plans and execute actions according to a well-known practical reasoning model—the belief-desire-intention (BDI) model. MATREM supports two centralized markets (a day-ahead market and an intra-day market), a bilateral market for trading standardized future contracts (a futures market), and a marketplace for negotiating the terms and conditions of two types of tailored (or customized) long-term bilateral contracts: forward contracts and contracts for difference. The tool is currently being developed using both JADE—the JAVA Agent DEvelopment framework—and Jadex—the BDI reasoning engine that runs over JADE, enabling the development of BDI agents. A graphical interface allows the user to specify, monitor and steer all simulations. The human-computer interaction paradigm is based on a creative integration of direct manipulation interface techniques with intelligent assistant agents. The target platform for the system is a 32/64-bit computer running Microsoft Windows.

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