A Case Study on Renewable Energy Management in an Eco-Village Community in Croatia - An Agent Based Approach

An agent-based framework for modelling and simulation of resource management in self-sustainable human settlements is presented and tested on a realistic scenario including energy production with photovoltaic panels. The results of the simulation showed that the framework was able to prolong the self-sustainability of the observed settlement with regards to the overall energy production, storage and demands in the simulation environment. A detailed simulation analysis is provided, as well as system optimization using a number of heuristics. Specifically developed agent classes, behaviours and protocols are proposed that allow to model and simulate the dynamics of local resource production, storage and consumption in order to pursue and evaluate self-sustainability of a settlement at hand. The framework can be used by a modeler either to design and simulate a new self-sustainable system, or to evaluate and analyze an existing system. The presented framework enables considerable improvements in the design of a settlement and its resource production, consumption and storage elements, in regard to the context of self-sustainability.