Principal-agent software environments for multi-attribute auctions and multi-bilateral negotiations

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This program is based on a premise that households and small businesses will play dual roles, i.e., buyers and sellers, and they will be actively participating in the emerging marketplaces. Today sales and purchases of energy create such a marketplace. One can envision that future smart appliances will participate in multiple marketplaces (e.g., food, washing powder, parts, and service). We propose that the smart appliances interact with a household software agent. This agent will engage in e-procurement activities with agents representing supply providers. The convergence here is that households and other individual nodes become suppliers and buyers and they participate in marketplaces in both roles. Another role that such household and small business agents may perform is building virtual organizations to meet the needs of the agents' principals. An example of such an organization is a virtual power plant which comprises low- and medium-voltage domestic distributed generators. Agents representing individual generators may work together and contribute excess energy. They may also attempt to influence their principals' behaviour in order to provide them with greener or cheaper energy or increase their revenues. These examples show the potential for the household-level software agents.