A multi-agent home automation system for power management

Abstract

This paper presents the principles of a Home Automation system dedicated to power management that adapts power consumption to available power ressources according to user comfort and cost criteria. The system relies on a multi-agent paradigm. Each agent is embedded into a power resource or an equipment, which may be an environment (thermal-air, thermal-water, ventilation, luminous) or a service (washing, cooking), and cooperates and coordinates its action with others in order to find acceptable near-optimal solution. The control algorithm is decomposed into two complementary mechanisms: an emergency mechanism, which protects from constraint violations, and an anticipation mechanism, which computes the best future set-points according to predicted consumptions and productions and to user criteria. The paper details a negotiation protocol used by the both mechanisms and presents some preliminary simulation results. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.