Pricing in Prosumer Aggregations using Reinforcement Learning

Abstract

Prosumers with generation and storage capabilities can supply energy back to the grid, or trade their surplus with other prosumers for their mutual benefit. A prosumer aggregation that facilitates such trades will price the energy being traded to achieve an objective such as profit maximization, social welfare, or market equilibrium. We propose the use of reinforcement learning to design a transactive controller to price energy in a prosumer aggregation. This has an advantage over other decentralized pricing mechanisms as it does not rely on iterative price settlement or load estimation by prosumers, and estimates the price in a day ahead manner. We present numerical case studies to evaluate our controller, and discuss extensions to implement this in real prosumer aggregations.