The evolution of the corporate utility business demands the development of novel distributed network technologies to enhance the existing capabilities of utilities in the area of real-time energy demand and supply management. The Department of Energy is interested in the development and implementation of both wide-area-based and distributed network tools and protocols that enable energy utilities to improve efficiency, conservation, billing, and customer service. This project will develop a family of products based on intelligent software agents to provide a distributed problem solving technique to address the changing requirements of the corporate utility industry. These agents will communicate with each other by means of the Internet or various private networks and will be used for buying and selling power, monitoring and controlling the power grid, and communicating with each other as supply and demand requirements change. The focus of the Phase I research effort is to develop emerging ideas and concepts for the use of intelligent agent technology in the energy industry and identify key application areas for the use of such technology. The Phase II effort will be to implement networks of software agents for solving selected problems in energy supply and demand management. In addition to implementing the agents, the Phase II effort will focus on developing a simulation and test environment for modeling and simulating agent behavior.Commercial Applications and other Benefits as described by the awardee:Successful completion of this project will lead to the development and implementation of EnerAgent TM and EnerAgency TM. These products will be extremely valuable to a deregulated energy industry where stakeholders must find new ways of becoming more competitive. EnerAgent TM and EnerAgency TM will provide the necessary mechanisms to allow utility providers to become more productive and to easily and securely share information while maintaining competition. This distributed problem solving technology also obviates many of the requirements for centralized energy management infrastructure, which is expensive and can retard competition.
