Reduction of Coalition Structure's Search Space Based on Domain Information: An Application in Smart Grids

Abstract

Smart grids have received great attention in recent years. Among many technologies that are used in smart grids, the concept of vehicle-to-grid (V2G) arises, which allows the use of electric vehicles' batteries to provide energy back to the grid when needed. An interesting research approach is the formation of coalitions among electric vehicles to provide electric power back to the grid, increasing the reliability and stability of the grid. In this paper, we propose a technique that uses smart grids' domain information to establish constraints on coalition formation process, promoting the pruning of the coalition structure's search space. We evaluate our approach by showing that it can drastically prune the search space, which makes coalition formation possible for a relatively higher number of agents.