A Multi-Agent System Architecture for Deregulated Electricity Market Communications in Nigeria

The deregulation of electricity market in Nigeria has opened up the requirement for information exchange among the market players in order to guarantee the reliability and security of the interconnected power system. Information and data exchange in heterogeneous data environment of the diverse market players are difficult due different data model and organization. This paper presents a bottom-up modeling approach of information exchange system for Nigerian deregulated electric power market using Multi-Agents System (MAS). To construct the MAS system, the functionalities of the agents, the interactions among the agents, and agent architecture are designed. A MAS for data communication based on the proposed architecture is an effective way of integrating heterogeneous data sources from the diverse players in the electricity market in Nigeria. MAS is well suitable for considering different scenarios of information exchange among market players as well as testing different requirements of information exchange in the electricity market.