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Distributed Optimization of Energy Costs in Manufacturing using Multi-Agent System Technology

Authors:
Tobias Küster
Marco Lützenberger
Daniel Freund
Sahin Albayrak

Keywords: Multi-agent Systems; Production Planning; Energy Efficiency

Abstract:
While widely endorsed, the increased provision of electricity from renewable sources comes with the concern that energy supply will not be as reliable in the future as it is today, due to variations in the availability of wind and solar power. However, fluctuations in energy supply also give rise to volatility of the price for short-term energy procurement, and therefore bear the opportunity to save costs through shifting energy consumption to periods of low market prices. In a previous work, we presented an evolution-strategy-based optimization of production schedules with respect to day-ahead energy price predictions, yielding good results, but - being a stochastic optimization - not always arriving at the best solution. In this paper, we extend our framework by agent-based mechanisms for distribution and parallelization of the optimization, to increase scalability and reliability of the approach.

Pages: 53 to 59

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2012

Publication date: March 25, 2012

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-412X

ISBN: 978-1-61208-189-2

Location: St. Maarten, The Netherlands Antilles

Dates: from March 25, 2012 to March 30, 2012