Power TAC: A competitive economic simulation of the smart grid

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. The Power Trading Agent Competition (Power TAC) is a rich competitive simulation of future retail power markets. This simulation will help us to understand the dynamics of customer and retailer decision-making and the robustness of market designs, by stimulating researchers to develop broker agents and benchmark them against each other. This will provide compelling, actionable information for policymakers and industry leaders. We describe the competition scenario in detail, and we demonstrate behaviors that arise from the interaction of customer and broker models.