Towards a SLA for Collaborating Smart Solar-powered Micro-grids

The mismatch between the decentralised renewable energy production from solar panels and the actual consumption during a day is an open issue. It is currently addressed by an exchange with power grid of the exceeding production and a consequent loss of energy. The usage of storage can help to foster a higher rate of self-consumption, but it is too much expensive for the user, above all if it is dimensioned according to the peek of production. For this reason the CoSSMic project aims at defining innovative autonomic systems for management and control of power micro-grids on users behalf. It will support the negotiation of energy exchange between peers of a neighborhood, which act as producers and consumers, using distributed optimization models and multi-agent techniques. This paper focuses on the multi-agent architecture, interoperability issues and on a SLA based negotiation protocol to support a distributed optimization strategy.