An agent-based collaborative platform for the optimized trading of renewable energy within a community

Abstract

Cities are increasingly recognized for their ability to play a catalytic role in addressing climate and energy challenges using technologically innovative approaches. Since energy used in urban areas accounts for about 40% of total EU energy consumption, a change of direction towards renewable energy is necessary in order to alleviate the usage of carbonized electricity and also to save money. A combination of IT and telecommunication technologies is necessary to enable the energy and resources saving. ICT based solutions can be used to enable energy and money saving not only for a single building, but for the whole community of a neighborhood. In this paper a model for the energy cost minimization of a neighborhood together with an agent-based interaction model that reproduces the proposed formal representation is presented. Furthermore the authors present a prototype implementation of this model and first experimental tests.