Homebots : Intelligent Decentralized Services for Energy Management

Abstract

The deregulation of the European energy market, combined with emerging ad-vanced capabilities of information technology, provides strategic opportunities for new knowledge-oriented services on the power grid. HOMEBOTS is the name we have coined for one of these innovative services: decentralized power load management at the customer side, automatically carried out by a ‘society’ of interactive house-hold, industrial and utility equipment. They act as independent intelligent agents that communicate and negotiate in a computational market economy. The knowl-edge and competence aspects of this application are discussed, using an improved version of task analysis according to the COMMONKADS knowledge methodology. Illustrated by simulation results, we indicate how customer knowledge can be mo-bilized to achieve joint goals of cost and energy savings. General implications for knowledge creation and its management are discussed