Cooperative electricity consumption shifting

Abstract In this paper, we propose the formation of agent cooperatives offering large-scale electricity demand shifting services, and put forward a complete framework for their operation. Individuals, represented by rational agents, form cooperatives to offer demand shifting from peak to non-peak intervals, incentivized by the provision of a better electricity price for the consumption of the shifted peak load, similar to economy of scale schemes. We equip the cooperatives with a novel, directly applicable, and effective consumption shifting scheme, that allows for the proactive balancing of electricity supply and demand. Our scheme employs several algorithms to promote the formation of the most effective shifting coalitions. It takes into account the shifting costs of the individuals, and rewards them according to their shifting efficiency. In addition, it employs internal pricing methods that guarantee individual rationality, and allow agents with initially forbidding costs to also contribute to the shifting effort. The truthfulness of agent statements regarding their shifting behaviour is ascertained via the incorporation of a strictly proper scoring rule. Moreover, by employing stochastic filtering techniques for effective individual performance monitoring, the scheme is able to better anticipate and tackle the uncertainty surrounding the actual agent shifting actions. We provide a thorough evaluation of our approach on a simulations setting constructed over a real-world dataset. Our results clearly demonstrate the benefits arising from the use of agent cooperatives in this domain.