Multi-Agent Coalition Formation in Power Transmission Planning

Abstract

Deregulation and restructuring have become unavoidable trends to the power industry recently, in order to increase its efficiency, to reduce operation costs, or to provide customers a better service. The once centralized system planning and management must be remodeled to reflect the changes in the market environment. We propose and have developed a multi-agent based system to assist players, such as, owners of power generation stations, owners of transmission lines, and groups of consumers, to select partners to form coalitions. The system provides a cooperation plan and its associated cost allocation plan for the user to support its decision making process. Among several coalition formation and cost allocation criteria, we have selected the Bilateral Shapley Value (BSV) as the theoretical foundation to develop the system. We have tested the multi-agent system with a classical transmission expansion example.