Alternative Energy Systems Consulting, Inc. (AESC) has been developing and applying intelligent agent technology since 1997. During that time AESC has developed and tested a variety of agents that operate as multi-agent systems (MAS) that:

• Smart*DER
  Monitor site and distributed energy resource (DER) conditions and schedules operation of DER assets in response to dynamic pricing signals (Smart*DER). Is capable of operating a single site or coordinating the operation of "portfolio" of multiple sites.
• Power Neighborhood¹
  Enable collaboration/coordination of DER assets amongst multiple sites within a localized region (distribution feeder) using a web-based auction and bilateral transactions.

In order to implement the Smart*DER and Power Neighborhood MAS concepts AESC developed and tested a variety of agent types that include:

Agent Type	Description
Owner Interface	Handles communication between the Smart*DER agency and the owner / user via a graphical user interface (GUI). Coordinates implementation of user commands and inputs. Coordinates the actions of a site within a portfolio of sites.
Data Manager	Controls storage and retrieval of data used within the MAS.
Facility Interface	Responsible for routine collection and recording of site data. Serves as the MAS interface to all of the facility sensors as well as the DER asset sensors and associated controls. Monitors and implements DER operating schedules.
Internet	Interface to all Internet-based information sources.
Data Analyst	Provides analysis services for: load forecasting, schedule generation, bid evaluation and bid generation, report generation.
Remote Data Collection	Allows for automated data collection from a remote site/MAS.
Site Manager	Represents the interests of a building owner/operator within the Power Neighborhood. Performs situation assessment, auction and transaction management, monitors and manages DER assets.
Substation	Manages/monitors the Power Neighborhood auction and provides connectivity to the local utility.

An intelligent software agent can be as simple or complicated as the application requires, and allows. Agents are typically designed to achieve efficiency in communications and also to meet the computational constraints of the host hardware/operating system. Typically, all agents operating within a MAS share a common operating system and communication protocol; beyond that each agent can contain a variety of functions and communication protocols as needed to fulfill its role within the MAS. To this end, AESC has developed a wide variety of agent functions that can be implemented singularly or in combination to achieve the necessary agent capability. The most important of these functions includes:

• Connectivity via:
• TCP-IP sockets,
• Remote Method Invocation (RMI), and
• Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA)
• Protocols supported:
• Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents (FIPA)
• EnerTalk, developed by Connected Energy Corp.
• Knowledge Query and Manipulation Language (KQML)
• Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
• Extensible Markup Language (XML)
• Security methods supported:
• Authentication using Public Key Cryptography Standard (PKCS)
• Encryption using symmetric encryption with TripleDES algorithm

• Database query generation compatible with most common databases including:
• Microsoft Access and SQLServer,
• DB2,
• MySQL,
• Oracle, and
• Other databases supported via JDBC drivers.

• Data validation - Missing or partial data, user configurable range validation
• Forecasting - On-going site electric load (near- and medium-term) prediction using multi-variant regression
• DER asset (distributed generation) performance -- Assessment and tracking
• Report generation - Analysis of hourly and daily results with ability to export CSV-formatted text files.

• Auction status - Monitoring of auction sessions to identify bidding opportunities
• Bid retrieval and submittal
• Session generation and submittal
• Bid evaluation and generation
• Bilateral transaction generation, negotiation and recording/tracking

• Agent state monitoring / awareness
• Agent state configuration management
• Agent auto restart, state recovery and synchronization

• Browser-based - GUI access by way of an Applet
• Stand alone - GUI access by way of an application installed locally.
• Web-based - Java-based application that allows full-featured Java client applications to be launched, deployed, and updated from a standard Web server.

Contact us today to discuss how one of our existing or customized intelligent agents can help you manage your energy use.

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