Multi-Agent Simulation Of The Time-of-use Pricing In An Urban Natural Gas Pipeline Network Based On Users Demand Response

This paper is supported by both National Natural Science Foundations of China (NSFC) funded project "Multi-Agent Simulation of the Time-of-Use Pricing Policy in an Urban Natural Gas Pipeline Network (No.71173202)".Urban natural gas pipeline network (UNGPN), public facilities of the city, has become the basic condition of social stability and economic development. The gas company is developing rapidly at home and abroad, increasing network coverage, user types increasingly wide range, number of users by leaps and bounds, and urban residents are growing reliance on natural gas. The natural gas supply and demand contradiction is prominent in many Chinese cities, and serious gas shortages appear in those areas, it expose the shortcomings of natural gas price system in China. Therefore, making natural gas Time-of-use (TOU) pricing mechanism of UNGPN can optimize the allocation of resources, guarantee the UNGPN stable operation, relieve gas shortages in city, and promote the healthy development of gas industry.Multi-Agent simulation of the TOU pricing in an UNGPN is to veritably reappear the dynamic change process and emerging characteristics of demands and running states in an UNGPN caused by the changes of natural gas price. This paper establishes a multi-agent model comprising a government agent, a gas operator agent, and user agents (an industrial and commercial users agent and a residential users agent) to simulate the independent behavior, reciprocal action, and the interaction with the environment of each agent. The government agent plays a monitoring role of providing the upper and lower limits of natural gas price. The gas operator dynamically sets natural gas price based on user response, within the bounds established by a government authority. Then, the users establish their own demand response rules, and modify their consumption according to the price provided by the gas operator. Through the simulation analysis, discuss the impact of price changes on peak, flat, valley load, and explore the optimal TOU natural gas price to guarantee the interests of each agent and minimize the peak-valley load difference. The main contents are as follows.(1) Propose TOU pricing mechanism of UNGPN including the object, principle, strategy and implementation process of TOU pricing. The research object of this paper is the urban gas pipeline network system, and the TOU pricing object is urban industrial and commercial users and urban residential users. Then, this study divides24hours in a day into three different times, i.e. flat, valley and peak, and the TOU pricing is implemented according to the principle of "large amount, high price". Moreover, the TOU pricing strategy is to make the peak-valley price relationship so as to reduce the peak-valley load difference in the gas pipeline network, and as much as possible to increase users’benefits.(2) Analyze the actual natural gas pricing mechanism of our country. This paper introduced natural gas production and consumption status in China, and analyzed the impact of the price on natural gas supply and demand. Finally, the problems that exist in the natural gas pricing mechanism in our country have been found by comparison of Chinese natural gas pricing mechanism and the world natural gas pricing mechanism.(3) Natural gas demand price elasticity estimation. The researches on natural gas demand price elasticity of industrial users and residential users at home and abroad are reviewed in detail respectively, on the basis of which our country’s natural gas demand price elasticity is obtained.(4) Short-term load prediction of UNGPN. This paper proposes an integrated short-term load prediction model based on experience mode decomposition (EMD), phase space reconstruction (PSR) and least squares support vector machine (LSSVM), and using this model, we forecast the natural gas load of24hours in a day in zhengzhou city gas pipeline network to provide simulation data for TOU pricing.(5) Establish multi-agent simulation model of TOU pricing in UNGPN. We obtain the assumptions of commercial and industrial users and residential users time-of-use pricing respectively by analyzing the impact of user consumption structure on the load in UNGPN, and on the basis of which multi-agent simulation models of natural gas TOU Pricing in urban industrial and commercial users, urban residential users and urban gas users are respectively established.(6) Simulation case. This study considers the case of Zhengzhou to simulate the hourly gas-usage behavior of industrial and commercial users, urban residential users and urban gas users respectively under the TOU pricing policy.Based on the above multi-agent simulation model, the study divides24hours in a day into three different times, i.e. flat, valley and peak, and assumes the rule of "large amount, high price", Zhengzhou is took as a case to simulate the operation state of UNGPN. Moreover, the results are shown as follows.(1) The established multi-agent system can reflect the dynamic change process of the UGPN load caused by the interaction between the government, gas operators, industrial and commercial users and residential users. The simulation results show that implementing the TOU price can efficiently reduce the peak-valley load difference, which provides a basis study for the implementation of the natural gas TOU price in different areas in China.(2) After implementing the TOU price for industrial and commercial users, the gas operators suffer a loss; however, after implementing the TOU price for residential users, rising peak price increases the benefits of gas operators at first, and decreases when the benefits reach to the maximum value, furthermore, if the increased ratio of the peak price reaches to some threshold value, the gas operator also incurs losses. In other words, implementing the TOU price for industrial and commercial users makes the gas operators suffer a loss, however, it is possible to make the gas operators benefit after implementing the TOU price for residential users.(3) The industrial and commercial users benefit from the TOU pricing policy and the greater peak-valley price difference results in more earnings for them. In comparison, residential users suffer a loss from the TOU pricing policy, and the greater peak-valley price difference, the more energy consumption expenditure.(4) When implementing the TOU price for industrial and commercial users, the lower residential users consumption, the lower peak valley load difference of UGPN, and the higher peak shaving efficiency; When implementing the TOU price for residential users, also the lower peak valley load difference of UGPN, but the poor peak shaving efficiency. Furthermore, When implementing the TOU price for industrial and commercial users and residential users at the same time, the peak shaving efficiency is the highest.The main innovation points of this paper are as follows.First, the innovation of topic project. Urban gas pipe network time-of-use pricing mechanism is put forward with the aim of load shifting and optimization of gas consumption structure, which is a new topic.Second, industrial and commercial users demand response model based on price elasticity is establish, and residential users demand response model based on consumer psychology is proposed by constructing natural gas price sensitivity function.Third, Urban gas users time-of-use pricing Multi-Agent simulation model is established. UGPN is a complex economic system with nonlinear interaction mechanisms. This paper establishes a multi-agent system comprising a government agent, a gas operator agent, and an industrial and commercial users agent. The system simulates the dynamic change process of demands and running states in an UGPN, and many meaningful conclusions are obtained.