ETSim: A Simulation Environment for Evaluating the Impacts of Autonomous Devices Participating in Local Markets and Dynamic Tariffs

Artificial intelligence’s fast rise and potential deployment in home appliances should raise numerous concerns among local markets, price incentives, and dynamic tariff designers. Soon, millions of devices packed with enough intelligence will selfishly maximize profits from all price signals. Thus, the prisoners’ dilemma, the tragedy of the commons, and gaming the system will be expected consequences if the price incentives are not adequately designed. Consequently, the present work proposes ETSim, a simulation environment for building and assessing how autonomous devices react to local market policies, price incentives, and dynamic tariffs, and to evaluate how they impact the distribution system. Moreover, ETSim allows the detailed modeling of users’ devices, optimization algorithms of those devices, and their mechanisms of market participation while measuring how the control strategies affect users’ satisfaction.