Crawford-Sobel meet Lloyd-Max on the grid

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel economic framework to optimize signaling schemes between consumers and electricity aggregators in smart grids, linking it to quantization and source-channel coding challenges.

Contribution

It applies an economic approach to smart grid signaling, establishing a new connection between game theory, quantization, and coding theory.

Findings

Insights into consumer-aggregator signaling strategies

Connection between signaling and quantization problems

Framework applicable to practical smart grid scenarios

Abstract

The main contribution of this work is twofold. First, we apply, for the first time, a framework borrowed from economics to a problem in the smart grid namely, the design of signaling schemes between a consumer and an electricity aggregator when these have non-aligned objectives. The consumer's objective is to meet its need in terms of power and send a request (a message) to the aggregator which does not correspond, in general, to its actual need. The aggregator, which receives this request, not only wants to satisfy it but also wants to manage the cost induced by the residential electricity distribution network. Second, we establish connections between the exploited framework and the quantization problem. Although the model assumed for the payoff functions for the consumer and aggregator is quite simple, it allows one to extract insights of practical interest from the analysis conducted. This allows us to establish a direct connection with quantization, and more importantly, to open a much more general challenge for source and channel coding.