An Integrated Two-Level Demand-Side Management Game Applied to Smart Energy Hubs with Storage

The integration of energy hubs – as an important component of future energy networks that will employ demand-side management techniques – has a key role in the process of efficiency improvement and reliability enhancement of power grids. In such power grids, energy hub operators need to optimally schedule the consumption, conversion, and storage of available resources based on their own utility functions. In sufficiently large networks, scheduling an individual hub can affect the utility of the other energy hubs. In this paper, the interaction between energy hubs is modeled as a potential game. Each energy hub operator (player) participates in a dynamic energy pricing market and tries to maximize his own payoff with regard to energy consumption satisfaction. We propose a distributed algorithm based on a potential game, which guarantees the existence of a Nash equilibrium. Furthermore, two different types of signaling are developed and simulation results are compared. Simulation results show that with the implementation of either setup the peak-to-average ratio between electricity networks and natural gas networks diminishes. An analysis of the results shows that either setup can have superiority over the other one with regard to generation costs, convergence rate, price level, and the stability perspective. Hence, energy providers and consumers can choose a favorable setup based on their respective needs.