We consider a smart-grid connecting several agents, modeled as stochastic dynamical systems, who may be electricity consumers producers. At each discrete time instant, which may represent a 15 minute interval, each agent may consume generate some quantity of electrical energy. The Independent System Operator (ISO) is given the task of assigning consumptions generations to the agents so as to maximize the sum of the utilities accrued to the agents, subject to the constraint that energy generation equals consumption at each time. This task of coordinating generation and demand has to be accomplished by the ISO without the agents revealing their system states, dynamics, or utility cost functions. We show how and when a simple iterative procedure converges to the optimal solution. The ISO iteratively obtains electricity bids by the agents, and declares the tentative market clearing prices. In response to these prices, the agents submit new bids. On the demand side, the solution yields an optimal demand response for dynamic and stochastic loads. On the generation side, it provides the optimal utilization of stochastically varying renewables such as solar wind, and generation with fossil fuel based generation with dynamic constraints such as ramping rates. Thereby we solve a decentralized stochastic control problem, without agents sharing any information about their system models, states or utility functions.
We show below that the ISO Problem is an example of a decentralized control system with non-classical observation patterns in which signaling can successfully result in globally optimum performance. The agents need not reveal their observations, state values, their individual system dynamics or their individual cost-functions. We construct concrete signaling schemes which encode-decode the information required in order to recover the same performance as that of centralized control. From the economics side, this work is an extension of general equilibrium theory @cite_2 . To the authors' knowledge there does not appear to be any similar result for coordinating multiple LQG systems or the efficiency of the simplified signaling.
@cite_2
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We consider a multi-agent system where, at every time instant, many users choose to use one of multiple resources, whose performance depends on the number of concurrent users. In addition, a central agent has up-to-date knowledge of the congestion across all resources. What signals should the central agent broadcast to the individual users in order to reduce the total congestion? We model users with varying levels of aversion to risk, and a heterogeneous population of users over these levels. We consider signaling schemes that communicate for each resource an interval of possible congestion values, instead of scalar values. We show how to optimise over these intervals with respect to the social cost, under constraints that these intervals be consistent with past observations. Moreover, under mild assumptions, the resulting distribution of users across resources converges. We consider linear quadratic Gaussian (LQG) games in large population systems where the agents evolve according to nonuniform dynamics and are coupled via their individual costs. A state aggregation technique is developed to obtain a set of decentralized control laws for the individuals which possesses an epsiv-Nash equilibrium property. A stability property of the mass behavior is established, and the effect of inaccurate population statistics on an isolated agent is also analyzed by variational techniques. The classic Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) mechanism ensures incentive compatibility, i.e., that truth-telling of all agents is a dominant strategy, for a static one-shot game. However, in a dynamic environment that unfolds over time, the agents' intertemporal payoffs depend on the expected future controls and payments, and a direct extension of the VCG mechanism is not sufficient to guarantee incentive compatibility. In fact, it does not appear to be feasible to construct mechanisms that ensure the dominance of dynamic truth-telling for agents comprised of general stochastic dynamic systems. The contribution of this paper is to show that such a dynamic stochastic extension does exist for the special case of Linear-Quadratic-Gaussian (LQG) agents with a careful construction of a sequence of layered payments over time. We propose a layered version of a modified VCG mechanism for payments that decouples the intertemporal effect of current bids on future payoffs, and prove that truth-telling of dynamic states forms a dominant strategy if system parameters are known and agents are rational. An important example of a problem needing such optimal dynamic coordination of stochastic agents arises in power systems where an Independent System Operator (ISO) has to ensure balance of generation and consumption at all time instants, while ensuring social optimality (maximization of the sum of the utilities of all agents). Addressing strategic behavior is critical as the price-taking assumption on market participants may not hold in an electricity market. Agents, can lie or otherwise game the bidding system. The challenge is to determine a bidding scheme between all agents and the ISO that maximizes social welfare, while taking into account the stochastic dynamic models of agents, since renewable energy resources such as solar wind are stochastic and dynamic in nature, as are consumptions by loads which are influenced by factors such as local temperatures and thermal inertias of facilities. We aim to reduce the social cost of congestion in many smart city applications. In our model of congestion, agents interact over limited resources after receiving signals from a central agent that observes the state of congestion in real time. Under natural models of agent populations, we develop new signalling schemes and show that by introducing a non-trivial amount of uncertainty in the signals, we reduce the social cost of congestion, i.e., improve social welfare. The signalling schemes are efficient in terms of both communication and computation, and are consistent with past observations of the congestion. Moreover, the resulting population dynamics converge under reasonable assumptions.