Decision Support using a Multi-Agent System for Hardware Upgrades in Smart Grids

Impact of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) on electrical distribution and generation systems is not fully understood. This poses challenges to distribution and generation companies on how to retool their distribution and generation systems to meet and supply increased demand in the future. Further, having unpredictable and uncontrollable generation patterns of renewable energy sources makes it even harder to manage supply and demand in the grid. This paper is one of the first attempts to provide a more realistic simulation environment to help engineers fully understand the impact of including PHEVs and RGs. The simulator provides a grid infrastructure with components modelled as agents. With this simulator, the grid can then be evaluated with different hardware and operating conditions to maximize resources. As such, utilities and generation companies can evaluate and test different strategies to upgrade the infrastructure to improve reliability and generation capacity to effectively meet demand.