Power TAC

Retail energy trading markets were designed long ago, when energy was produced almost exclusively using fossil fuels. Back then, balancing supply and demand of energy and predicting market behavior was relatively easy. Then came the dawn of renewable energy.

Renewable energy is great – it’s cheap and it’s clean. But the production output of renewables is hard to predict. Wind doesn’t always blow on cue and the sun doesn’t always shine according to forecast. That means the more renewable energy in the energy market mix, the bigger the 'intermittency' problem.

And as more energy consumers become energy producers as well – we call them 'prosumers' – the once straightforward energy supply and demand balancing act becomes breathtakingly complex.

In 2009, we designed an open-source platform to support an artificial intelligence-driven Power Trading Agent Competition – PowerTAC – to explore how digital information systems could  integrate sustainable energy into existing markets in a profitable way.

Find out more more about Power TAC here.