We consider a demand management problem of an energy community, in which several users obtain energy from an external organization such as an energy company, and pay for the energy according to pre-specified prices that consist of a time-dependent price per unit of energy, as well as a separate price for peak demand. Since users' utilities are their private information, which they may not be willing to share, a mediator, known as the planner, is introduced to help optimize the overall satisfaction of the community (total utility minus total payments) by mechanism design. A mechanism consists of a message space, a tax/subsidy and an allocation function for each user. Each user reports a message chosen from her own message space, and then receives some amount of energy determined by the allocation function and pays the tax specified by the tax function. A desirable mechanism induces a game, the Nash equilibria (NE) of which result in an allocation that coincides with the optimal allocation for the community. As a starting point, we design a mechanism for the energy community with desirable properties such as full implementation, strong budget balance and individual rationality for both users and the planner. We then modify this baseline mechanism for communities where message exchanges are allowed only within neighborhoods, and consequently, the tax/subsidy and allocation functions of each user are only determined by the messages from her neighbors. All the desirable properties of the baseline mechanism are preserved in the distributed mechanism. Finally, we present a learning algorithm for the baseline mechanism, based on projected gradient descent, that is guaranteed to converge to the NE of the induced game.
翻译:我们考虑的是能源界的需求管理问题,即一些用户从能源公司等外部组织获取能源,并按事先规定的价格支付能源,包括按单位能源按时间计价的价格,以及按峰值需求分别支付。由于用户公用设施是他们可能不愿意分享的私人信息,因此引入了一个称为规划商的调解人,以帮助通过机制设计优化社区的总体满意度(总使用量减去支付总额)。机制包括信息空间、税收/分流和每个用户的分配功能。每个用户都报告从她自己的循环信息空间选择的信息,然后收到根据分配功能确定的一定数量的能源,并支付税收功能规定的税收。一个理想的机制诱导出一种游戏,即他们可能不愿意分享的Nash equiliblibrial(NE),其分配方式与社区的最佳分配相吻合。作为起点,我们设计一个能源界机制,其适当属性包括全面实施、强有力的预算平衡和个人合理性。然后,每个用户和计划商家都从她自己的循环空间里,我们修改这个由分配多少能源量的能源量级机制,然后我们修改这个由分配的基线机制,然后由每个用户的基本信息在每一交易中确定。