.AixLib.Controls.HVACAgentBasedControl.Agents.Broker

Information

Overview

• This model is a broker agent which collects requests from room-agent and buys heat for the lowest price from producer agents.
• It is based on communication via UDP and logic implemented with the help of the StateGraph Modelica library.
• It is used together with at least one room or consumer agent and at least one producer agent.

Concept

The broker agent gets cooling- or heating requests from one or more room-agents and collects them to one big request. The broker then calls for proposals from all producer agents and afterwards collects the proposals. The best-suited price and capcity is chosen and confirmed to the related producer agent. The other agents are rejected. The logic is implemented with the help of the StateGraph library. Communication is realized with the help of the DeviceDriver library and follows the language standards for multi-agent-systems set by the FIPA to the highest possible extend for Modelica models. The following figure shows the behaviour of the broker agent. For further information please refer to the first reference.

References

• Roozbeh Sangi, Felix Bünning, Johannes Fütterer, Dirk Müller. A Platform for the Agent-based Control of HVAC Systems. Modelica Conference, 2017, Prague, Czech Republic.
• FIPA ACL Message Structure Specification
• FIPA Communicative Act Library Specification
• Felix Bünning, Roozbeh Sangi, Dirk Müller. A Modelica library for agent-based control of building HVAC systems. Applied Energy, 193:52-59, 2017.

Example Results

• Simple Heating System

Revisions

• December 2016, by Roozbeh Sangi:
  revised
• December 2016, by Felix Bünning: Changed some variables to Integer type in order to avoid warnings caused by using the "==" operator
• November 2016, by Felix Bünning: Added handling of proposals in case demand exceeds supply
• October 2015, by Felix Bünning: Developed and implemented