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Contents 1 Next Meeting 1.1 Competitive simulation: Energy markets and Supply Chain Management 1.1.1 Abstract 1.1.2 John Collins Bio 1.1.3 Wolfgang Ketter Bio 1.1.4 References 1.1.5 Further Reading 2 About 2.1 Object Technology User Group (OTUG) 3 Mailing Lists 3.1 Mailing Lists 4 Twitter

Next Meeting

Competitive simulation: Energy markets and Supply Chain Management

• Speakers: John Collins and Wolfgang Ketter
• Date: August 24, 2010
• Time: 6:30 - 7:00PM Social with refreshments, 7:00 - 9PM Presentation.
• Location: University of Saint Thomas, St. Paul Campus
• Room: Owens Science Hall/3M Auditorium
• Price: Free!
• Sponsored by: Graduate Programs in Software and the School of Engineering, University of St. Thomas
• RSVP: Please email gradsoftware@stthomas.edu if you plan to attend. RSVP preferred by Thursday, August 19th.

Abstract

Sustainable energy systems of the future will need more than efficient, clean, low-cost, renewable energy sources. They will also need market structures that motivate sustainable behaviors on the part of households, businesses, and investors. We know how to build “smart grid”' components that can assist energy consumers to manage their consumption, but without pricing policies that motivate consumers to install and use these new tools, they will be ineffective at maximizing utilization of renewable energy sources while minimizing dependence on non-renewable energy. Unfortunately, serious market breakdowns such as the California energy crisis in 2000 have made policy makers justifiably wary of setting up new retail energy markets.

The design of retail energy markets depends heavily on economically-motivated behavior of the participants, but proposed retail markets are too complex for straightforward game-theory analysis. Agent-based simulation environments have been used to study the operation of wholesale power markets, but these studies are not effective in ensuring against market breakdowns due to unanticipated self-interested or destructive behaviors of the participants. Therefore, Collins and Ketter are working on developing an open, competitive simulation approach that will address the need for policy guidance based on robust research results on the structure and operation of retail power markets. These results in turn will help policy makers to create institutions that produce the intended effects on energy production and consumption.

Over the years, such competitions have been important catalysts for progress in Artificial Intelligence. Prior to beginning work on the TAC Energy scenario, Collins and Ketter have been involved in the Trading Agent Competition for Supply Chain Management (TAC SCM) for several years. TAC SCM requires autonomous supply chain entities, modeled as agents, to coordinate their internal operations while concurrently trading in multiple dynamic and highly competitive markets. Since its introduction in 2003, the competition has attracted over 150 entries and brought together researchers from AI and beyond in 75 competing teams from 25 different countries.

The talk will describe these two scenarios and some of the conceptual and computational challenges that must be overcome to design and build agents that can operate successfully in such environments. It will also address a few of the ways in which this research might begin to influence industry practice in the real world.

John Collins Bio

John Collins is a lecturer in Computer Science at the University of Minnesota. He has over 30 years of industry experience in product development, research, and consulting. For the last ten years, he has been in academia, focused on trading agents and economic reasoning. He has been involved in the Trading Agent Competition for Supply Chain Management (TAC SCM) from its inception. Along with Prof. Maria Gini, he leads the MinneTAC research group at Minnesota. He led a major revision of the game specification in 2004 and 2005, served as Game Master for two years, chaired the 2007 TADA workshop, and is Operations Chair for TAC SCM, managing the game infrastructure and user support. Along with Prof. Ketter and colleagues from Germany, Greece, and the U.S., he is deeply involved in developing a new competitive simulation scenario to model retail energy markets. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Association for Trading Agent Research, and on the editorial board of Electronic Commerce Research and Applications.

Wolfgang Ketter Bio

Wolfgang Ketter is Assistant Professor at the Department of Decision and Information Sciences at the Rotterdam School of Management of the Erasmus University. He received his M.S. in Software Engineering from the University of St. Thomas in 2000 and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota in 2007. He founded and runs the Learning Agents Research Group at Erasmus (LARGE). The primary objective of LARGE is to research, develop, and apply autonomous and mixed-initiative intelligent agent systems to support human decision making in the area of business networks, electronic markets, and supply chain management. He has been involved in TAC SCM from its inception, was co-chairing the TADA workshop at AAAI 2008, the general Chair of TAC 2009, and is member of the Board of Directors of the Association for Trading Agent Research since 2009. His research has been published in various information systems, and computer science journals such as Decision Support Systems, Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, European Journal of Information Systems, INFORMS OR/MS Today and International Journal of Electronic Commerce. He serves on the editorial board of Electronic Commerce Research and Applications.

References

• Learning Agents Labs
• MinneTAC

Further Reading

• Carsten Block, John Collins, Wolfgang Ketter, and Christof Weinhardt. A multi-agent energy trading competition. Technical Report ERS-2009-054-LIS, RSM Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 2009.
• John Collins, Wolfgang Ketter, and Norman Sadeh. Pushing the limits of rational agents: the Trading Agent Competition for Supply Chain Management. AI Magazine, 31(2):63-80, June 2010.
• John Collins, Wolfgang Ketter, and Maria Gini. Flexible decision control in an autonomous trading agent. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, 8(2):91-105, 2009.

About

Object Technology User Group (OTUG)

OTUG is an umbrella user group spanning languages, methods, tools, and technologies for the software development community in the Minneapolis - St. Paul area.

OTUG exists to foster an environment for professional discussion and education pertaining to software development ecosystems; i.e., software development organizations and the contexts in which they operate.

Meetings are generally held on the third Tuesday of each month and are a mix of general and special interest discussion, open space, fishbowl and panel sessions, with periodic presentations by featured speakers.

Meetings are open to anyone with an interest in software development. You become a "member" simply by attending and participating. OTUG is a volunteer organization and we welcome your active involvement.

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