Edinburgh Napier University

  Reducing peak electricity consumption is important to maximise use of renewable energy sources, and reduce the total amount of capacity required on a grid. Most approaches use a centralised optimisation algorithm run by a utility company. Here we develop a decentralised approach, where agents represent the interests of a household, and negotiate over when to run various appliances. We have developed an experimental framework that allows users’ perceived fairness of different negotiation algorithms to be evaluated.