A Decentralized Approach for Optimal Wholesale Cross-Border Trade Planning Using Multi-Agent Technology

Abstract—Over the past decade, power industry has been un-dergoing deregulations to introduce competitions among market participants. Once centralized decision making must now adapt to the new market structure. The optimal cross-border electricity trade planning is an important issue in interconnected power sys-tems under transmission open access. In this paper a decentralized approach is suggested to solve the problem using multi-agent tech-nology. In the new approach rational market participants make decisions based on their own benefits, in the meantime the min-imum production and transmission cost of the whole system can be reached without a central coordination except necessary informa-tion exchange through media like the Internet. A relevant lemma has been proven. The approach is implemented via a multi-agent system using Java programming language. Computer tests on a 5-area test system show that the suggested new approach is effec-tive and promising. Index Terms—Cross-border trade plan, decentralized optimiza-tion, multi-agent technology, power market. I