Agent Based Simulation Model of Virtual Power Plants for Greener Manufacturing

Green energy supply can play an important role for manufacturing companies. To achieve this, companies can support their energy supply with renewable energies (RE). For designing and planning a Virtual Power Plant, the PREmdeK simulation can be used. Realized with the AnyLogic© software, PREmdeK 3.0 simulates combinations of RE sources, energy storages and consumers as a multiagent system (MAS). In this MAS, every member of the local energy system is represented by an agent. The agents negotiate to reach a balanced energy state. The negotiation is based on operating data (energy production and/or demand) and sustainability criteria. The simulation is set up in a generic way, able to reflect changes in the constellation of the energy system. New agents can easily be implemented into the generic MAS through inheritance. In this paper, the implementation of this MAS to handle energy balancing of local energy system including sector coupling is presented.