A Survey on Multi-agent Management Approaches
Transcription
A Survey on Multi-agent Management Approaches
A Survey on Multi-agent Management Approaches in the Context of Intelligent Energy Systems Khawla Ghribi a,b Email: [email protected] Sylvie S. Ghalila a,c Email: [email protected] Zahia Guessoum b Email: [email protected] Javier Gil-Quijano c Email: [email protected] Dhafer Malouche d,e Email: [email protected] a: CEA-LinkLab, Pôle Technologique El Ghazela, 2083 Ariana, TUNISIE; b: LIP6-UPMC, 75015 Paris, FRANCE; c: CEA-LIST-LADIS, F-91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, FRANCE ; d: Département Statistique, ESSAI, Charguia II, B.P 675 - 1080 Tunis, TUNISIE; e: U2S-ENIT, B.P 37, 1002 Tunis, TUNISIE. Abstract—Several papers deal with the topic of multi-agent solutions for the energy management in complex energy systems. According to the time scale, we distinguish two kinds of management: a reactive management (short-term) and an anticipative management (long-term). The objective of this paper is to propose a survey of the different multi-agent approaches, we thus propose a classification of existing management approaches according to the level of the system at which the decisions are made. The physical deployment of services’ steering shows that these services can be only of two types: independent and interdependent and gives hints about the adequate tools of management. Index Terms—Multi-agent; models; deployment; management; decision. I. INTRODUCTION An energy system is often considered as a multi-source system composed of at least one production unit and optionally a unit of storage. The label energy systems covers systems of different scales: it designates single building equipped by a production unit and may designate districts and distribution networks. A production unit may be based on renewable energy. Intelligent energy system is an energy system which is able to automate tasks usually done by humans. In the case of renewable energy sources, they allow the minimization of energy lost in transmission and provide high quality energy through the efficient management. Optimal management of complex energy systems based on renewable energy must take into account both the variability of the available resources (weather) and the interaction of the energy system with the distribution network: it deals with the availability / relevance of energy producers, physical constraints, network requirements and economic constraints. This optimal management is materialized by taking production commitments (via medium-term contracts or participation in daily markets), developing consumption schedules (on time scales ranging from 10 to 60 minutes) and periodically updating these production commitments and consumption sched- ules. Instructions extracted from these schedules and production commitments are used by control mechanisms operating at time scales ranging from milliseconds to the minute which ensure “instantaneous “ stability and security of the energy system. Various studies have been proposed for the management of complex energy systems. The first approaches of management aim to automate tasks by mainly learning humans preferences [1], [2], [3]: Mozer [1], use neural networks models to manage energy within a building.These models anticipate the residents’ needs, after being trained by observations of residents’ lifestyle. There exist, subsequently, approaches which are based on one central unit monopolizing the management of the energy system, [4][5]. In [4] and [5], the authors delegate the process of management to a central energy management system (EMS) which selects one of predefined algorithms returning a power production planning after performing a power prediction and a load forecasting. In these two papers, the real-time adaptation to new constraints, is delegated to local controllers. The latter have the ability to reroute power in a limited offred margin. Adding local controllers to the management system is indispensable and aims to improve flexibility. However, the above mentioned approaches still suffer from a lack of flexibility illustrated by difficulties when adding or removing equipments. Compared to classical centralized solutions, Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) naturally provide flexibility and distributability. For those reasons, the use of MAS for management of energetic systems is fast increasing. MAS have been widely used in the design and the implementation of smart management of complex energy systems [6-18]. Those different works aim to: • anticipate the different components (generators, consumers, storage) behaviors and develop power planning for possible situations [9], [14]. For instance, Nagata • • and al. [9] propose a market-based mechanism, where a central agent initiates a call for proposals every x minutes. Agents, other than the central agent, send messages of purchase or sale of electrical power based on demand’s prediction (in the case of load agents) and generation’s prediction (in the case of producer agents). After a negotiation process, the central unit determines the operation settings of the system for the next period. The occurrence of new constraints such as a low battery level between two calls for proposals doesn’t modify the planned operation of the system. ensure a reactive management[12], [13], [15], [16], [18]. In [12] the power mistmatch (the difference between consumed and produced energy in the whole system) is determined by aggregation of local mismatches. Depending on the found value of the power mismatch, decisions such as cut off some loads (loads with the lowest priority) are taken in a distributed and reactive way. While in [13] agents in charge of producers and agents in charge of consumers communicate, exchange commands and information and monitor in time their corresponding producer/consumer based on the announcement provided by a control agent such as electricity price announcement or the occurrence of an upstream outage. Smitha and Fossy [18], use fuzzy rules to reactively control critical loads. combine both anticipative and reactive management [68], [11], [17], [19]. For instance, in [17], agents in charge of consumers predict future consumption and send it to their redistribution agent. The redistribution agent, which manages a cluster of consumers, reacts to an overconsumption (higher than predicted) of a consumer by redistributing the available resources within the cluster. Because of the numerous management solutions available in the state-of-the-art, choosing the best management strategy for a given energy system is an issue. Our objective is to provide guidelines to facilitate the selection of the management strategy. To reach our objective we provide in this paper a classification of different management strategies that are suitable to different physical and software situations. The remaining parts of the paper are organized as follows. In Section 2, we address the problem of the scarcity of publicly-available work that aim to test the research contributions in real energy systems, summarize from available work the physical deployment of smart buildings, and explain the influence of time constraints and the nature of needed services on the choice of the adequate tools of management. Section 3 presents the multi-agent models. In Section 4, according to the level of the system at which the decisions are made, a classification of existing multi-agent approaches is introduced. Section 5 is dedicated to a discussion about generated classes. Section 6 concludes. II. INTELLIGENT ENERGY SYSTEMS: PHYSICAL DEPLOYMENT AND MANAGEMENT A. Intelligent energy systems: Physical deployment Despite the importance of research in the domain of energy systems management, we note the scarcity of publiclyavailable detailed works that aim to test research contributions in real energy systems. The scarcity of detailed data sets is considered as an obstacle to academic research. In addition to the rarity of complete databases, we note the lack of information about the deployed configuration allowing the data collection. Providing information about the deployed configuration facilitates the development of test platforms. Therefore, we propose to describe in this section the existing deployment solutions enabling easy assessment of management based on real data. To simulate real building (as example of small-scale energy system), monitored loads in the test platforms must be of various types: loads with highly variable power usage (e.g. Tvs, Computers), stable loads (e.g. digital clocks), indicative loads (e.g. refrigerators), continuously functioning loads (e.g. Modem, desk phones, refrigerators), loads functioning for few minutes per day (e.g. oven, microwave, kettle, coffee maker), and in between loads that work from 1 to 2 hours a day (e.g. smart phones chargers, video game consoles, laptops). Abras and al. [20] have proposed in the project “Smart*” a description of the infrastructure used to gather data: a commercially available hardware and open source Linux-based software to communicate with used hardware. We summarize, in the following, tools needed to realize the smart building without going into details of the equipments’choice. Figure 1. Monitored smart building Wall switches, which control lighting and exhaust fans, are replaced by switches that send notifications of on/off events to a remote server. These events may also include the event Dim: The change of light level. Electrical outlets are monitored by plug-meters. Plug-meters are intermediate between the unit (oven, computer...) and the electrical outlet. Choosing suitable plug meters should take into consideration the variation of the power use: the plug-meters which are suitable for stable loads are different from plugmeters that monitor devices with highly variable power use. Wall switches and plug-meters send signals to a modem and thereafter to a remote server: the sent messages are on/off notifications for wall switches and the amount of consumed energy for plug-meters. Wall switches send notifications to server every preset duration in seconds, while the consumed energy recorded by plug-meters will be requested by server every x seconds (the value of x depends on the device [21]). In addition to the use of electricity (see Figure 1), environment data as indoor temperature, outdoor temperature, rain rate, indoor humidity, outdoor humidity and wind speed will be transmitted to the remote server. These data are captured by sensors installed in the rooms, outside the building and in the refrigerator. The detailed dataset requires, adding to electrical and weather data, information about heating and cooling systems. Therefore, communicating thermostats are used: thermostats send data to the server through several radio technologies (WiFi, ZigBee, Z -Wave). These data are On /Off events and the change in the temperature set values. A smart building usually contains motion sensors that send notifications to the modem when motion is detected or when a preset value of minutes have been spent without detected movement. These type of data are used to take into account the user behavior. Kolter and al. [22] propose a freely available dataset and the hardware used to obtain this dataset in order to tackle the problem of energy disaggregation (determining the component devices from an aggregated electricity signal). There are three levels of monitoring: plug level, circuit level and whole-home level. Plug level is represented by power strips (see Figure 2). Each power strip connects appliances to the home internet connection via a router. Circuit level is a set of appliances performing the same role, (e.g. the kitchen outlets, lighting...) monitored by eMonitors which are attached to the house’s circuit breaker panel. The last monitoring level is the whole home monitoring which is an association of a transformer, an oscilloscope and a converter that ensure respectively the measure of current, voltage and the transformation of analog signal to a digital reading. Electronics which monitor the circuit level and the home level of data collection can be regrouped in a box. The box is connected to a laptop and to an external hard disk. The data logged in the hard disk of each box are transferred manually or via the network to a database server. We cannot tackle the issue of the intelligent energy systems deployment without addressing the topic of the estimation of renewable energy generation. Indeed the current worldwide ecological and political context drives towards a fast integration of renewable energy. The integration of renewables, and especially solar and wind energy causes a number of issues, particularly associated to variability and intermittence. Figure 2. Power Strip [22] In that context researchers were interested in the development of models which automatically and accurately predict renewable generation. For instance, Sharma and al. [23] and Lopez and al. [24] propose models to estimate solar radiation (used as proxy to solar generation) from weather metrics. B. Intelligent energy systems: Management Intelligent energy systems aim to maximize the comfort of humans by optimizing tasks needed to be provided in a specific time interval. This is only possible through the use of efficient tools of management. To choose the most efficient tools of management, we must go through a specification of the required management. When considering temporal constraints, we distinguish two types of management (for a complete explanation, see [8] and [25]): • A reactive management applied to a set of pressing tasks. Pressing means that a violation of its time constraints can block the whole system , such as the task of switching from battery to a backup generator in case of low battery level. • A proactive management functioning on long periods of time and operates with average energy values. A proactive management is at most suitable for permanent services. We mean by service (as it has been defined in [8]) a response to a specific need of the user realized by a set of equipments and including a set of tasks (e.g. the heating service which is the response to user’s need of keeping room’s temperature in a specific interval and which is realized by radiators). The reactivity and the proactivity characterize the service’s management. When considering the whole system, we notice that there is not a totally reactive management neither a proactive one, it is in fact a combination of these two management types. The choice of tools to manage the whole energy system depends on the services provided by the system. A permanent service is a service whose energetic activities occur over a long interval of the operation horizon of the whole system, such as the solar production service offered by PV panels. In contrast to temporary services which have a limited horizon of operation, such as the washing service offered by the washing machine and the dryer. Temporary services are characterized by an operation interval = [Time of earliest start, the latest end time], while permanent services are characterized by an impact: the impact of a permanent service is the time required to move from a critical situation where the user comfort is not satisfied (a function of satisfaction quantifying the user comfort is beyond a certain threshold) to a situation of total satisfaction. The ranking of these specifications (Operation intervals of temporary services and impacts of permanent services) in the operation horizon of the whole system creates disjoint and intersectional intervals and allows to conclude about the independence of services. Services corresponding to intervals which are disconnected from the rest of intervals, have a high level of independence. In contrast to services whose characteristic intervals are highly interfered, which have a high level of dependence. The nature of services (Independent, dependent, permanent ,temporary) gives hints about the required management. Indeed, the independence of a service from the rest of services promotes autonomy and subsequently promotes self control. In this case the distributed paradigm seems to be an efficient solution. The management processes are completed by a local control process which is materialized by a set of local controllers installed at the operating points of power-electronic interfaces of energy producers and provide a very fast regulation to an electric perturbing event. e.g. : voltage regulation. This local control is out of our interest in this paper. III. MULTI-AGENT MODELS A Multi-Agent System (MAS) is a set of active and autonomous units in interaction, able to be organized in a dynamic and adaptive way. Agents are autonomous, able to react, they can represent physical or virtual entities, are located in environment characterized by a temporal persistence to satisfy their objectives depending on their resources and skills. The MAS approach propose interesting characteristics for the development of a system composed by autonomous multiple components that can cooperate. Agents allow modelling heterogeneous, complex, dynamic, non-linear and evolutive systems. Moreover, they allow showing intelligence and capacities which are different and globally higher than those of the individual composing agents. This intelligence emerges from the coexistence of roughly autonomous agents that are able to cooperate. The MAS paradigm draws its basis from different fields (e.g. software engineering, artificial intelligence, current and distributed programming, etc.), this pluridisciplinarity reveals its consistence but induces a big complexity and variety of approaches. Thus, different agent models (their main categories are reactive and cognitive agents) of environment, interaction and organization are elaborated and always combined to build a MAS. The application of MAS for complex environment control reveals different problems which are still the object of several researches. In fact, the complexity of new information systems (e.g. accessible system from internet), the traditional application seen under MAS (e.g. logistic, transport, games, etc.) and the recent emergent applications (smart buildings, ambient intelligence) are considerably increasing due to their distribution, the big amount of information handled, their cooperative and adaptive aspect, and their openness. We present in this paper an overview of multi-agent application in complex energy systems’ fields. These systems have all the characteristics of a good application field of multi-agent system. They allow in fact validating and demonstrating the proposed multi-agent models limits. IV. MULTI-AGENT MANAGEMENT APPROACHES The intelligence of energy systems is strongly related to the capacity to anticipate behaviors, in other words the ability to predict the occurrence of an event and the planning of actions that follow this occurrence. We focus in this paper on multi-agent approaches which manage the piloting plans. Several multi-agent solutions have been proposed to define and update the piloting plans. A spectrum of planning methods can be built. Level of decentralization varies along this spectrum from very high where we find the fully decentralized approaches of planning to a very low where decisions are concentrated in a central unit. This spectrum can be decomposed into three main supersets: 1) Centralized decision making for distributed execution, 2) Distributed decision making to achieve an overall objective, 3) Distributed decision making for distributed execution. A. Centralized decision making for distributed execution A plan is generated in a centralized manner by a central agent. Therefore the generated plan is partially ordered plan. The central agent divides the generated plan under potentially synchronized sub-plans and transmits the sub-plans to the executors agents (see Figure 3). Executors agents perform their plans as concurrent processes [26]. Figure 3. Centralized plan divided in sub-plans The proposed method in [6], which manages energy within a building, falls into this group of methods. The Smart building multi-agent system is modeled by four types of agent : -Sensor agents : each sensor agent is in charge of a set of physical sensors,(e.g. the level of light, motion) -Effector agents: effectors have a direct impact on device behaviors. -Butler agent: Butler agent is the central agent where main decisions are made. -Housekeeper agent: This agent gives a repertory of the active agents and its capabilities. Physical sensors send in real-time the gathered data to the corresponding sensor agent (SA). The SA affects a symbolic representation to the centigrade gathered data. This abstraction mimics the way in which humans think. Example : Values of temperature are transformed to “ warm “ and “ cold “. A set of rules which describe the physical environment are established at this level of reasoning. Example : Cold (X) : T<18 for a given situation X. The butler agent transforms observations of a current situation to logic formulas. These logic formulas can be used to extract explicit information by a deduction process. The butler agent consults the set of available rules in order to specify goals. Rules have the form of <Goal> : <Pre-conditions for these goals to be detected> Example : ImproveHealth(x) : present(x,y), user(y), has_fever(y). which represents the rule: if (In a situation X, a user Y is present and has fever) then the goal “ImproveHealth” should be achieved. This method is based on the existence of a workflow repository (Patterns of activities): periodically or as an answer to a user action, the butler agent selects the most appropriate workflow to the current situation by semantically matching the goal of the user and the profiles of all the workflows available in the knowledge base of the system and choosing the most consistent with the goal. The semantic matchmaking is a hierarchical process which can be applied within a workflow to find the most appropriate subflows. Once a detailed workflow (which is composed of simple goals that can be satisfied by effectors ) is found, the process of semantic matchmaking stops. In this step, the builder agent consults housekeeper agent to allocate simple goals/actions to the right agent. To accomplish simple goals, effectors take decisions relative to the question “ how to fulfill the simple goals concretely?” Example: If the goal is to reduce temperature, the effector which is in charge of controlling temperature, chooses between turning on the air conditioning or opening the window. In case of interactive effectors, hints helping effectors to fulfill simple goals can be sent from users. SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems are centralized systems used to monitor and control equipments in the industrial sector. Its major function is to gather data from remote equipments and provide an overall control [27]. All approaches, managing complex energy system and using anticipation of events by means of SCADA systems, belong to this class of management. Among these approaches, we find the method used in [7] that addresses the problem of management in a residential grid. The central agent of [7]’s MAS defines goals and associates to each goal a plan of ac- tions transforming a current situation to another one satisfying the goal. Moreover, it proposes a solution to the problem of uncertain gathered data based on the probabilistic theories. B. Distributed decision making to achieve an overall objective The synthesis of plans is distributed on several agents. Each agent which is in charge of a sub-task generates the corresponding sub-plan before starting an interaction phase. The goal of the interaction phase is the development of a global plan (see Figure 4). Interaction phase may involve the exchange of sub-plans to synchronize or to refine, [26]. This class of methods which is based in the convergence of agent’s behaviors toward a goal can be described in a semi distributed manner. It differs from the centralized approaches by distributing the resolution of the energy management problem and cannot be described as fully distributed due to the existence of an agent that orchestrates the execution. Figure 4. Development of global plan from sub-plans This class includes the approach proposed in [8] in which an agent manages a set of domestic equipments and is responsible of a precise service. A service, as defined in II.B is a response to a specific need of the user realized by a set of equipments. A service is divided into stages. Each agent generates a local plan that does not violate its constraints. A local plan is a possible cutting of a service (Heating service for example) into set of steps, each step is characterized by a duration and by an amount of power. A step can be empty. The local plan is valid for the period between k and k+l, l is the time horizon for planning and is characterized by a degree of user satisfaction. The method consists in developing a “Solving agent” with high computing resources whose role is to build a global plan from local plans. Initially, each agent generates N local plans leading to a maximum level of satisfaction then sends it with its satisfaction to the “solving agent”. The “Solving agent” tries for m iterations to find a feasible global plan offering the maximum possible satisfaction. In case of failure, the level of satisfaction is decreased by one unit of satisfaction and the “Solving Agent” resumed the search of a feasible solution in m new iterations. Deindl and al. [28] proposed as well a semi distributed multi-agent approach of large electrical grids’ management. This approach is based on the resources allocation. The MAS is composed of consumer agents (buyers) and producer agents (sellers). Authors provide consumer agents with a high computing capability, this capability allows them to elaborate Figure 5. Parallelization of sub-plans local plans for future slots of time. Consumer agents develop propositions of local plans for future slots based on forecasted energy demands and estimation of electricity prices, then they participate to one or multiple negotiations (each consumer can participate to multiple negotiations simultaneously). Each negotiation includes producer and consumer agents seeking to find an optimal allocation of energy for a specific time slot. Negotiators can change significantly their propositions (by shifting load demand of consumers agents to later slots of times) in order to achieve an overall goal: the optimal allocation of energy. The existences of this overall goal as well as the absence of an explicit controller allow us to qualify this approach by semi distributed. This class of approaches includes also mechanisms used in [9], [14] and [17]. C. Distributed decision making for distributed execution Agents can plan and execute their plans regarding of the existence of an overall plan or an overall goal of the system. They proceed an interaction phase in order to parallelize competitors sub-plans but not in order to establish a global plan (see Figure 5). One of the proposed approaches to parallelize sub-plans is the incremental approach: To consider a set of coordinated sub-plans and to insert a new sub-plan to coordinate with existing plans, [26]. The method proposed in [10] to manage the building thermal energy falls under this category. It combines a modeling step of the physical system and a control mechanism based on the previous proposed model. Authors of [10] distinguish between: producer agents which pilot the producer of thermal energy such as heat pump, consumer agents which are in charge of comfort functions, distributor agents ( subpart of the physical distribution network) which affect the energy transmission and which associate a set of clients to a set of suppliers and environmental agents which provide information relative to the state of environment. All these types of agents are defined by a set of devices. A device represents a real sensor, actuator or a cost. Authors impose a hierarchical structure of the system by assuming that a producer agent can supply only one distributor and a consumer agent can acquire energy only from an unique distributor. The control mechanism of this approach begins by retrieving information from the physical system and computing forecasted values that will be attributed to the physical system at the next step. Then consumers develop plans of their needs, producers develop plans of their capabilities of production and the associated costs before sending their plans to the corresponding distributors. Distributors connect their clients to the appropriate suppliers offering the cheapest resources on a specific forecast duration. At the end of the execution of that mechanism, each agent has a refined sub-plan in which resources are specified. No need for a central unit for piloting plans. The fully distributed method proposed in [10] had not been compared to a centralized or mixed multi-agent solution. By comparing it to a not agent-based solution, Lacroix and al. [10] remark the increase of the operating cost in return to an increase of the thermal confort of users. Similarly, a distributed approach is proposed in [29] to manage small-scale electrical grid, the MAS model is composed by producers agents, consumers agents and observers agents. The optimal collective operation of this MAS is reached without the existence of a central supervisor and is based on the concept of prioritization. The prioritization of agents preferences depends on two metrics: the cost of energy delivery and a performance measure.The performance measure quantifies the current and past operations of the agent, it can be in the case of a consumer agent the proportion of critical loads provided by the smart buildings generators. V. DISCUSSION The physical distribution of consumers devices and microsources of the energy system and the independence of services have oriented researchers to agent-based management solutions. We are precisely interested in one type of agent-based management in energy systems: the anticipative management based on agents planning. The question is whether to adopt centralized, distributed or semi distributed approaches for piloting the system. We discuss here advantages and disadvantages of these classes of management. Starting from the centralized one, where all computations (necessary for planning energy systems’ operation) are done at a central unit. This management facilitates the human interface: it is easier to send one user command to a central unit rather than to send a user command to each agent. Centralized management is usually more efficient in terms of utilization of resources due the existence of central unit owning a global picture of the system [14]: it offers interesting solutions for conflict resolution and convergence toward a global solution. Another advantage of centralized approaches is their performance with tasks demanding precision, low level interactions between agents cannot emerge the precision provided by a central supervisor [14]. On the other side, in centralized management agents rely strongly on a central unit, which in case of its failure can leave the system uncontrollable [26]. This type of management is suitable for single building (small scale energy system) where producers’ agents have same goals [30]. Proceeding from the fact that a complex problem is solved more quickly when it is based on locally approaches [14], researchers were interested in fully distributed approaches. The later have proved a high flexibility, high parallelism, robustness and autonomy in return to high cost: this type of management requires the use of appliances having important computation capabilities for executing complex reasoning algorithms [8], [14]. As solution semi distributed approaches have been imposed offering a balance between efficiency and autonomy. The semi distributed management can be realized by hierarchical distribution of functions: plans for next steps are first elaborated locally and finalized at the highest level of the hierarchy[14][17], as it can be done by giving more roles to one agent among similar agents which have a certain degree of autonomy. VI. CONCLUSION In this paper, we presented a synthesis of multi-agent approaches which have been proposed to manage intelligent smart systems. We distinguished three approaches: centralized decision making for distributed execution, distributed decision making to achieve an overall objective, distributed decision making for distributed execution. These multi-agent approaches provide suitable solutions for different situations; they provide flexibility and robustness when it is required in specific situations , they also offer high precision and high efficiency in others cases. However, the proposed approaches do not adapt techniques coming from the probabilistic reasoning’s domain which seem interesting to explore. We are working on graphically modeling the multiagent system in order to take advantage of the graphical model’s strength in dealing with missing data. ACKNOWLEDGMENT We are grateful to Telnet Innovation Labs team. R EFERENCES [1] M. C. 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