August 2022

Sanjay Chandlekar working under the supervision of Dr. Sujit Gujar presented a paper on VidyutVanika21: An Autonomous Intelligent Broker for Smart-grids at the 31st International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-ECAI 2022), held in Vienna, Austria from 23 – 29 July. 

The other authors of this paper are Bala Suraj Pedasingu, TCS; Easwar Subramanian, TCS; Sanjay Bhat, TCS and Dr. Praveen Paruchuri.

 Research work as explained by the authors: An autonomous broker that liaises between retail customers and power-generating companies (GenCos) is essential for the smart grid ecosystem. The efficiency brought in by such brokers to the smart grid setup can be studied through a well-developed simulation environment. In this paper, we describe the design of one such energy broker called VidyutVanika21 (VV21) and analyze its performance using a simulation platform called PowerTAC (PowerTrading Agent Competition). Specifically, we discuss the retail (VV21–RM) and wholesale market (VV21–WM) modules of VV21 that help the broker achieve high net profits in a competitive setup. Supported by game-theoretic analysis, the VV21–RM designs tariff contracts that a) maintain a balanced portfolio of different types of customers; b) sustain an appropriate level of market share; and c) introduce surcharges on customers to reduce energy usage during peak demand times. The VV21–WM aims to reduce the cost of procurement by following the supply curve of the GenCo to identify its lowest ask for a particular auction which is then used to generate suitable bids. We further demonstrate the efficacy of the retail and wholesale strategies of VV21 in PowerTAC 2021 finals and through several controlled experiments.

IJCAI-ECAI 2022 featured the following tracks:

workshops and tutorials, a doctoral consortium, the main technical program, an early career spotlight track, special tracks on “AI for Good” and on “AI, the Arts and Creativity”, survey, sister best paper and journal tracks, a demo, a video and a robot exhibition track, a diversity and inclusion program, as well as competitions and challenges.

Website: https://ijcai-22.org/