TAC 2012 - Thirteenth Annual Trading Agent Competition

Sustainable energy systems of the future will need more than efficient, clean, low-cost, renewable energy sources; they will also need efficient price signals that motivate sustainable energy consumption as well as a better real-time alignment of energy demand and supply. In Power TAC, agents act as retail brokers in a local power distribution region, purchasing power from a wholesale market as well as from local sources, such as homes and businesses with solar panels, and selling power to local customers and into the wholesale market. Retail brokers must solve a supply-chain problem in which the product is infinitely perishable, and supply and demand must be exactly balanced at all times.
We invite you to participate in the 2012 Power Trading Agent Competition (Power TAC - see www.powertac.org). Participants will design autonomous trading agents that act as retail brokers, earning profits by selling tariff contracts to customers and trading in a wholesale market for bulk power. The simulation scenario is designed to provide a range of challenges to broker agents, including a day-ahead market for wholesale power, realistic weather forecasts (which affect the output of wind and solar energy, as well as consumption), customers with uncertain demand and a variety of preferences over tariff terms, and a distribution utility that charges for energy transport and for imbalances between supply and demand. Tariffs can offer fixed, time-of-use, or dynamic pricing, and a number of other features that are commonly available in liberalized power markets.
Power TAC 2012 is part of the Thirteenth Annual Trading Agent Competition (TAC-12), to be held in May and June of 2012, with the finals taking place during the AAMAS-12 conference in Valencia (June 3-8), preceded by qualifying and seeding rounds in May and early June. You may register for the competition starting 15 January 2012 through 30 April 2012 here. Power TAC Game Master is Wolf Ketter (email ), Erasmus University, Rotterdam, and Power TAC Operation Chair is John Collins (email ), University of Minnesota.
An initial server and sample broker implementation is available for evaluation. See www.powertac.org for details, including the formal game specification and links to the software and developer resources.
We hope to see you in Valencia!
Wolf Ketter, John Collins, and the Power TAC team