An application of cyber-physical system and multi-agent technology to demand-side management systems

This paper presents a Cyber-Physical System (CPS) based on Multi-Agent System (MAS) technology to implement an intelligent Demand-Side Management system (DSM). This system has been applied to optimize the power consumption of a public building (a University Facility) powered by a photovoltaic plant with the purpose of maintaining the same comfort level for users. This CPS is composed of a sensor network where in each node there is a computing unit handling various sensors and actuators. Each physical node is installed in a room of the building and it is twinned with an intelligent agent in the virtual world where the MAS is implemented. In this MAS the various agents carry out a cooperative strategy to meet its own local goal (grant a good Human Thermal Comfort (HTC) level for users present in its environment) compatibly with the global one (minimize the power consumption). The results show that the proposed system can be the consumer's key to maximize the sustainability and profitability of self-production energy plants. (C) 2020 Published by Elsevier B.V.