J Ambient Intell Human Comput (2018) 9:337–349
https://doi.org/10.1007/s12652-016-0414-z
ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Multi agent system based on law of gravity and fuzzy logic
for coalition formation in multi micro-grids environment
Didi Omar El Amine1 • Jaouad Boumhidi1
Received: 16 May 2016 / Accepted: 15 September 2016 / Published online: 22 September 2016
 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2016
Abstract This paper presents an intelligent multi-agent
system based on the law of gravity and fuzzy logic for the
optimal management of the intra-MicroGrids energy. The
aim is to overcome the weakness of the MicroGrid (MG)
regarding the intermittent generation of its renewable
source and its dependency to the main grid as the only
reliable part in the power exchange. Taking into account
that the power loss between each MG and the main grid is
larger than that among the MGs, the aforementioned
dependency causes high transfer loss. On the other hand,
the failure of the single point of common coupling with the
main grid makes the MG in a critical situation, especially
when there is an internal lack in production. To deal with
these problems, the proposed system allows the MGs
which may be either generator or load to collaborate
together in coalition form. So, the optimal energy distri-
bution and power loss reduction are targeted by dynami-
cally changing the size and the structure of coalitions of all
participating MGs in the power exchange. Based on the law
of gravity, the system allows the MGs that require energy
to possibly specify the resources with the best energy offer
and the lowest transfer loss. Besides and in order to deal
with the multiple accesses to the same resources, a process
based on fuzzy logic is made. Finally the JADE (JAVA
Agent DEvelopment Framework) has been used and a
& Didi Omar El Amine
aminedidiomar@gmail.com
Jaouad Boumhidi
jaouad.boumhidi@usmba.ac.ma
1 ment and geophysical proximity of the consumptions sites.
LIIAN Laboratory, Departement of Computer Sciences,
Faculty of Sciences Dhar Mehraz, Sidi Mohammed Ben
Abdellah University, 30003 Fez, Morocco
comparison is made in order to show the impact of using
the proposed system.
Keywords Multi-agent systems (MAS)  Fuzzy Inference
System (FIS)  Law of gravity  Micro-grid (MG) 
Coalition formation  Energy management
1 Introduction
Nowadays, the area of electricity power has a lot of chal-
lenges to deal with like the human population explosion,
lack of energy fossils, and environment constraints. With
regard to the cited constraints above, the need to manage
the power with a rational way is required through a new
flexible structure of electricity network in order to act in
response to the uncertain nature of the electricity market.
The smart grid can be considered as a modern and
intelligent electrical power grid infrastructure. Character-
ized by its facility to integrate the digital technology, the
smart grid offers the bidirectional flux of information
between the utility and its customers. Besides, it aims to
enhance the controls, automation, by the computers and,
new digital equipment integration to facilitate the imple-
mentation of the computational solutions. One of the most
important characteristics of this modern structure is in
allowing the consumer the opportunity to participate in the
electricity market ex-changes not only as customer, but
also as producer (Usman and Shami 2013).
The need for smaller smart grid controlled in decen-
tralized manner is emerging nowadays to take account of
the distributed energy resources (DERs), storage equip-
A micro-grid (MG) (Piagi and Lasseter 2006) is a local
implementation of an improved grid that allows to the
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338 D. O. E. Amine, J. Boumhidi

small organizations as a hospital, a factory or a village a among MGs, this minimization can be achieved by
local decision making capability. Most of MGs are efficient favouring the exchange between the MGs.
within regional areas where its autonomy permits the – There are several PCCs, and the single point of failure
possibility to manage their own storage, their own pro- can be avoided.
duction and the power flow with the main grid based on – Alleviate the pressure on the main grid by the
their benefit or cost. decentralized distribution of the energy required.
Most of the existing approaches to deal with MG energy
Taking in consideration the aforementioned objectives,
management problem were proposed to have an optimal
this paper focuses on finding the optimal coalitions between
energy scheduling of the MG units with the main grid.
the different MGs by proposing a MAS based on the law of
Those approaches are split into two types. First one are
gravity and fuzzy logic for a multi-MGs environment. The
based on centralized approaches which requires high
main idea is to form dynamically the optimal coalitions to
computational capabilities depending on one functioning
allow MGs to collaborate and to cooperate together in order
point to fail (Lu et al. 2011; Jiang et al. 2013), the second
to share the surplus of energy taking into account the transfer
type is modelled on basis of distributed approaches as multi
loss. Each MG in the coalition formation process can
agent system such as proposed in (Foo Eddy et al. 2015;
exchange the power with the other MGs or with the main grid
Fu-Dong et al. 2012; Logenthiran et al. 2010; Elamine
taking into account the cost of energy transfer loss which
et al. 2016; Elamine et al. 2015). In the proposed works, the
depends on the difference in line voltage between the par-
MG power exchange relies only on the main grid as a
ticipating MGs and the line voltage between each MG and
reliable source to feed the internal demand or to sell the
the main grid. In the same context, we tend to guarantee the
surplus due to the storage limitation capacity. This reliance
same benefit for all the MGs participating in the exchange
is required for two reasons: The first one is due to the large
without any preference among the MGs contrarily to some
gaps between demands at different times of the day (peak
works which consider some preference or make some con-
and off-peak); the other reason depends on the nature of the
straints to prompt the exchange among the MGs like in
internal generation which is subject to climatic changes.
(Chakraborty et al. 2015; Chao et al. 2013).
Focusing on internal energy management of the MG is not
In our approach, we distinguish two types of MG. The
always sufficient. The MG needs some time to exchange
first one has a surplus of energy and can act as ‘generator’;
electricity with the external environment (buy if there is an
the second one has a lack in energy and act as ‘load’. In
excess of power and good price of electricity and sell if there
addition the price of the exchanged power among the MGs
is a lack), instead of being limited by exchanging power only
is the same as among each MG and the main grid.
with the main grid. But this exchange operation can be
At the beginning, each MG load needs to specify the list
beneficial only when it is made with the nearest generators or
of the best generators bringing the best services with the
loads to avoid power transfer loss. Other limitations reside on
lowest energy transfer cost for a period of time (1 h). For
risk to break down the single point of common coupling
this reason, two issues need to be treated: The first one
(PCC) especially in the case when the MG internal produc-
resides on how can the MG load finds the suit-
tion cannot feed the demand.
able provider(s) with the lowest transfer lost and how can
Consequently the MG power exchange operation must be
we find the harmonic process to organize the competition
more rational to be able to exploit all the existing opportu-
of the MGs load about the provider(s).
nities, not only those which are offered by the main grid. In
The main contribution of this work resides on treating
the same context, it’s necessary to exploit the MG as a unit
those issues by using the law of gravity by the MGs load at
for flexible operation with the nearest possible resources.
the first step to define the list of the best generators that can
Based on the ability to share the information through
be used as resources. This list is sorted by the value of the
ICT, this structure is able to act as an independent entity
power attraction between the MG load and those genera-
with the surrounding MGs regarding all the operations in
tors. Then a mechanism based on fuzzy logic (FL) is used
the electricity market and the bills treatment.
to affect the resources to the MGs load and to treat the
Hence the possibility to apply the cooperation paradigm
problem of the competition among the MGs towards the
in such social environment as the multi MGs environment
same resource.
leads to fulfil several objectives:
The rest of the paper is organized as following: in
– Enhancing the management of power by taking the Sect. 2, the background and related works are discussed. In
nearest MGs with surplus of power as resources from Sect. 3, the proposed MAS is described and the mechanism
the MGs with a lack of power. for the formation coalition is detailed. In Sect. 4, the
– Minimizing the transfer loss due to the difference in simulation result is presented which shows the performance
line voltage between the MG and the main grid and of the system. Finally, a conclusion is made in Sect. 5.

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Multi agent system based on law of gravity and fuzzy logic for coalition formation in multi…
2 Related works
The existing renewable energy resources are a clean, a
natural and an attractive option for providing green energy
to the increasing demand of the world. Due to the fluctu-
ating demand and generation from renewable energy, it’s
difficult to satisfy the time-varying request and the opera-
tions constraints with the efficiently optimization of the
MG functioning.
There has been a significant progress in the development
of the MGs in order to deal with DERs intermittent.
Although, the conventional functioning represented in the
exchange with main grid makes this structure unable to
overcome the increased problems in the electricity area
such as the power loss. So, the research now is interested in
the innovation of the systems that allow the MG to col-
laborate with the other ones. The aim of this collaboration
is to achieve several objectives such as:
– Feed the demand in peak time.
– Respect the environmental constraints.
– Reduce the loss cost of transfer.
In order to exploit the MG approach, the researchers
focus currently on the cooperation based approaches and
the innovation of optimal energy management for a net-
work of heterogeneous MGs. So, the aim is to manage the
power exchange between those MGs. Many works
(Nguyen and Le 2013; Wu and Guan 2013) have tackled
this problem.
On the other hand, some researchers have focused on the
coalition formation notion among the MGs and how finding
the optimal mechanism to form this coalition. These
researchers take into consideration the power loss caused
by the transfer between the MGs and try to minimize it as
(Chakraborty et al. 2014; Filippo et al. 2012).
In the same context in (Saad et al. 2012) a game theo-
retic model is presented in order to achieve the optimal
power distribution in smart grid which is composed of
several cooperative MGs. Whenever a MG has an surplus
of power while another has a lack of energy, it is better for
these MGs to exchange energy among them. The power
exchange between the MGs instead of the exchange among
the MGs and the main grid can achieve a lot of benefits
such as:
– Reduction of the loss transfer due to the exchange with
the main grid.
– Enhancing the autonomy of the MG and make it more
independent from the main grid.
In (Saad et al. 2011) the coalitional game theory is used
to study new cooperative strategies between the MGs of a
distribution network. In order to feed a demand of group of
339
consumers and minimize the power losses, a coalitional is
formulated between numbers of MGs. The proposed MGs
are composed of several units (PV, wind turbine, storage
devices…) and that are connected to a main grid. For the
optimal formation of coalitions, an algorithm is proposed in
order to make each participating MG able to autonomously
cooperate with the others MGs and self-organize into a
partition composed of disjoint MG coalitions. The aim of
the proposed algorithm is to promote the power exchange
among them. So each formed coalition can consist of two
types of MGs. The first one that has an excess of energy to
transfer or sell and can be considered as resource. On the
other hand, the second type consists of MGs which need to
buy or acquire additional power to meet their demands.
Within every coalition, the MGs coordinate the power
transfer among themselves as well as with the macro-grid
station. The aim of this cooperation is to maximize the
utility which is inversely proportional to the loss transfer.
In (Dayong et al. 2015) a multi-agent coalition forma-
tion-based energy dispatch mechanism is proposed. The
strength of this mechanism is presented in its ability to deal
with the failure of single knot in the system. This ability is
due the decentralized nature of this mechanism that does
not need any central controller information. In addition this
mechanism can function without any global information.
Each node in the network is able to make decisions about
energy dispatch through a negotiation protocol.
In (Chakraborty et al. 2015) an optimal coalition forma-
tion mechanism of MGs in a smart distribution system is
proposed. This mechanism consist of a Hierarchical priority
based coalition scheme (HRCoalition) and a Greedy based
strategy is designed to perform network constrained energy
exchange (GreedEnEx). The aims of this combination are:
– Minimize the energy burden and dependency on the
utility grid.
– Minimize the overall grid network power loss.
– Maximize intra-coalition energy transfer.
The proposed HRCoalition mechanism can provide the
optimal coalition that achieves the aforementioned objec-
tives. The optimality is realized by reaching a state of
cooperative equilibrium for all MGs and coalitions. The
optimality of the formed coalitions is proved by coalitional
game theory. While GreedEnEx yields system level opti-
mization using output of HRCoalition. An equivalent
pricing mechanism is designed to provide a form of eco-
nomic incentive to the MGs participating coalition for-
mation. In order to prompt the intra-MGs exchange the
pricing mechanism can sometime pass over the benefit of
the generator that can achieve good benefit by exchanging
with the main grid instead of the MGs.
In (Chao et al. 2013) a game theoretic coalition for-
mulation strategy for the MGs called GT-CFS is proposed.
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340 D. O. E. Amine, J. Boumhidi

The proposed strategy allows the MGs belonging to the

same network the opportunity to cooperate by forming a
partition composed of disjoint MG coalitions. Also, the
GT-CFS allows the MGs the possibility to stay in the same
coalition, to leave or to search for another. The decision of
each MG is taken based on the environmental changes and
the variation of the power demand of the MGs. In this
strategy the MGs can not only coordinate and exchange the
power among them, but it can also exchange with the
Macro-station (MS).
The following table summarizes the most important
related works with their limitations (see Table 1):

3 Multi agent system for coalition formation

3.1 System model

The proposed system as shown in Fig. 1 consists of disjoint
MGs where each MG can be characterized by the internal
DERs and several types of users such as companies, resi-
dential customers, schools or hospitals. The MGs are able
to predict the energy state for the next hour. All these MGs
are linked to the main grid and can exchange electricity
with it. It is very difficult to link all the MGs together
because the cost of creating and maintaining these links
will be very high. On the other hand, we will have a net-
work with a complex structure for information sharing.
Consequently, in the proposed system some MGs are not
linked to each other.
In a non cooperative case each MG can only exchange
power with the main grid. There is a voltage difference in
Fig. 1 Multi agent system architecture
power line transfer between the MG and the main grid and
the power line transfer among the MGs. So, the power loss
of the intra-MGs transfer is low compared to the transfer
loss between the MGs and the main grid. Consequently, the
proposed system prompts the cooperation between the MGs
and intra-MGs exchange. The MGs can form cooperative
groups referred to as coalitions, in these coalitions the MGs
with excess of power can share the power with other MGs
that require energy. In (Chao et al. 2013) it is proposed that
the ‘‘seller’’ may sell all the power to the ‘‘buyer(s)’’ and that
the ‘‘buyer’’ has enough ‘‘money’’ to buy the power from the
‘‘seller(s)’’ to meet its demand. In order to overcome the
problem of the proposition mentioned above, the suggested

Table 1 Related works summarization

Work Advantage Limitation

Saad et al. Reduction of the loss transfer based on the exchange power There is no pricing mechanism detailed for the exchanged
(2012) among the MGs energy among the MGs and the main Grid
Saad et al. Reduction of the loss transfer based on the exchange among the The difference between the amount of energy required by the
(2011) MGs buyer and the available of the seller is not discussed. Some
time the available energy is bigger than the required and the
difference needs to be involved in intra-MGs exchange
Dayong et al. In this work there is no need to a central controller or any The information flux around the neighbor is not detailed and
(2015) global information and the single point of failure can be the transfer loss in different topology networks is not
avoided and since this mechanism does not require any global discussed
information
Chakraborty Minimize the energy burden and dependency on the utility The pricing mechanism doesn’t guarantee the same benefit to
et al. grid, minimize the overall grid network power loss and the participated MGs in the exchange. Sometimes this
(2015) maximize intra-coalition energy transfer exchange could be at the expense of the generator benefit
Chao et al. Give to the MG the possibility to collaborate with the others in The buyer is obliged to have all the necessary money to buy the
(2013) dynamic coalition and give it the opportunity to leave in entire seller production even if it does not need all that
order to search new possible coalition, the aims from this production
mechanism is to reduce the transfer loss and feed the required
energy

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Multi agent system based on law of gravity and fuzzy logic for coalition formation in multi…
system treats the case when the power provided by the
generator is greater than the power the buyer requires,
because sometimes it can’t provide all the necessary money
to buy all the power. So, as a solution, it can share the same
generator with other buyers. The utility of each coalition can
be measured by the exchanged power among the MGs.
Behind each intra-MGs exchange there is an achieved
benefit for all participating MGs in this exchange. The
benefit is due to the minimized loss. The average utility of
each coalition can be quantified as follows:
1 Define the internal production, load for the next hour
Uci ¼ ; ð1Þ
1 þ e1þjEjEc
where,
|E| The exchanged power.
Ec The loss due to the transfer and its calculation can be
based on (Chakraborty et al. 2015):
Xm
Ec ¼ lossði; jÞ; ð2Þ
k¼0
where: m is the number of peer to peer exchange.
The loss can be calculated based using the equation in
(Chao et al. 2013):
Rij Q2
lossði; jÞ ¼ þ aQ;
U The sub-sets verify the following conditions:
where Q is the transferred power and U is the transfer
voltage, the transfer voltage among the MGs is less than
between each MG and the main grid and a is a fraction of
power loss caused by other factors. To simplify this, a is
treated as a constant. We denote also that when the
exchange happens among the MGs only, a is set to 0
because there is no voltage conversion. R is the resistance
of the transfer line and it depends on the distance transfer.
So, R can be calculated based on:
disði; jÞ
Rij ¼ q ; ð4Þ
s
where q is the resistivity,s is the cross sectional area of the
wire and dis(i, j) is the distance of transfer between two
MGs or between MG and the main grid.
Taking into account the inherent benefits such as
autonomy, reactivity, proactivity and social ability, the
multi-agent systems (MAS) are integrated currently with a
large scale to model and to implement electrical power
systems such as MG (Abhilash et al. 2015). To exploit the
cited advantages of MAS, in this work each MG will be
modelled by an agent that can take rational decisions. So,
the system consists of a set of agents with specific roles.
The proposed MAS consists of the following agents:
• Market agent: This agent provides the information of
the electricity market and can predict the price of
electricity for the next hour.
341
• Coordinator agent: This agent provides the matrix of
distances between the linked MGs and acts as a register
to save each MG with its predicted state (Load or
Generator).
• MG agent: This agent presents the MG and it can also
be the responsible of operations for the assignment of
resources (Generators). This agent is also able to be
registered in the register of the coordinator agent as a
generator or a load. Before any registration, it’s
necessary to make the following steps:
and calculate the balance for the next hour:
bal ¼ production  demand ð5Þ
If bal \ 0 The MG agent will be registered as demand
(load) in the register of the Agent Coordinator.
If bal [ 0 The MG agent will be registered as generator
in the register of the Agent Coordinator.
If bal = 0 The MG agent will not be registered.
So for a defined set of N micro-grids {MGs} there are
three sub-sets:
{MGGi} The set of MGs registered as generators.
{MGLl} The set of MGs registered as loads.
{MGNk} The set of not registered MGs.
ð3Þ
8
< fMGGi g; 0  i\N
fMGLl g; 0  l\N i þ l þ k ¼ N; ð6Þ
:
fMGNk g; 0  k\N
and

fMGGi g [fMGLl g [fMGNk g ¼ fMGsg
: ð7Þ
fMGGi g \fMGLl g \fMGNk g ¼ /
3.2 Law of gravity based method for resources
classification
The law of gravity has been applied in several applications
in computer science. For example, an optimization algo-
rithm based on the law of gravity and mass interactions is
introduced in (Rashedi et al. 2009). In this algorithm, the
searcher agents are a collection of masses which interact
with each other based on the Newtonian gravity and the
laws of motion. The proposed method has been compared
with some well-known heuristic search methods. The
obtained results confirm the high performance of the pro-
posed method in solving various nonlinear functions.
Besides, the law of gravity is widely used in data clas-
sification and data clustering as in (Peng et al. 2009) where
data gravitation based classification (DGC) is proposed.
The basic principle of DGC algorithm is to classify data
samples by comparing the data gravitation to the different
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data classes. In the DGC model, a kind of ‘‘force’’ called
data gravitation between two data samples is calculated.
Our goal is to manage the exchange of energy between
the MGs. So in this research we must pay attention to the
loss in network caused by the transmission. In general, we
can consider the distance and the transferred power as the
two important criteria that influence the transfer loss. So,
each MG load (MGL) needs to define the neighbor
resources that can provide the optimal service; Otherwise,
from the matrix distance and the available information
about the excess of each MG registered as generator. So,
each MGL needs to answer the following question:
What are the nearest generators with the most important
energy offers and with the minimal loss for energy transfer?
Some time the provided power of the nearest generator
can be small compared to the transfer distance. So, to deal
with this problem and answer the question above, we rely
on the law of gravity in order to measure the relation
between the MGL and the resources. This relation is
identified with a value of attraction between MGL and the
resource (MGG).
As shown in Fig. 2, the law of gravity can be explained
as following: For two bodies 1 and 2 with mass m1 and m2
distant by a distance r, each one exerts on the other an
attractive force said gravitational attraction force (they
attract each other).
This gravitational attraction force exerted by each of the
two bodies on the other has the same value; it is propor-
tional to the product of the two masses and inversely
proportional to the square of the distance. This force of
attraction can be calculated by the equation (Eq. 8).
m1 m2
F1 ¼ F 2 ¼ G 2 : ð8Þ
r
In the proposed system, our space of the MGs \ MG,
distance, E[ is modeled as a space where there are inter-
actions between the MGs. In our case, instead of the masse,
we are interested in the energy size; therefore we will
replace the mass by the concept of energy. By the use of
the law of gravity, the MGs load can find the best resource
Fig. 2 Law of gravity
123
D. O. E. Amine, J. Boumhidi
with the best service. The larger the amount of energy
transferred in a small transfer distance, the higher the
utility value is for the load and the resource. So, each MG
load (MGL) will calculate the force of attraction with the
available generators as follows:
ðE1 E2 ÞE2=E1
F¼G : ð9Þ
r2
G is the gravitational constant.
E1 is the value of the energy required by the MG load
(MGL).
E2 is the available energy of the MG generator (MGG).
r is the distance between the MAG load and MG
generator.
After calculating the values of attraction forces with the
various MG generators (MGG), each MGL will classify the
most important resources according to the importance of
the value of this magnitude. Based on this classification,
the MGL starts an assignment process using fuzzy logic in
order to get the suitable MGGs.
3.3 Fuzzy logic process for resources assignment
To assign each resource to the most suitable MG load, we
must consider the critical case as more demands on the
same resource at the same time. On the other hand, it’s
necessary to satisfy all the loads as much as possible,
prompt the exchange among the MGs as much as possible
and guarantee the benefit for all the participating MGs.
For this reason, it’s necessary to design a flexible pro-
cess that allows the agent the possibility to react intelli-
gently based on its own state in order to achieve its
suitable benefit. This process allows each MG load (MGL)
to express its need for each available resource and to
compete in order to gain this resource based on its need
level. This need must be modeled on the basis of the MG
load state and its environment.
Exploiting well the status means that the agent be able to
react approximately like human and be able to analyze the
situation. To put differently, it will be able to take the
suitable decision by taking into account the importance of
the proposed resource compared to the available ones and
the competition level about it.
All these situations and the environment can be sym-
bolized in some vague and uncertain parameters. To
overcome the vagueness of the parameters, the incomplete
knowledge of all the reactions and the status of the other
agents, we need a mechanism where the decision should be
taken under vagueness. The FL is the appropriate tool for
handling this vagueness (Novak 2005), or uncertain non-
linear systems on the basis of measured data (Kang et al.
2007). In the proposed process, we do not handle the
uncertainty of an event occurrence, but the one associated
Multi agent system based on law of gravity and fuzzy logic for coalition formation in multi… 343

Fig. 4 SigmaAtrr membership function

Fig. 3 Attraction membership function

with the decision making at every round of the process.

Through fuzzy inference rules, we can add a level of
expertise in the decision process. The decision is taken
from MG load based on a number of important parameters
and these rules in order to gain the resource. Consequently,
an assignment process that ensures the allocation of these
resources is suggested. In this process, each MGL agent is
guided by a fuzzy logic system and has the possibility to
offer a bid for a resource. This bid depends on the Fig. 5 VPris output membership function
importance of this resource. The importance of each
resource is measured based on the force of attraction (at-
traction membership function) Fig. 3 mentioned above and
the other available resources. So, there is a ratio (Sig-
maAtrr membership function) Fig. 4 which shows clearly
the importance of the resource compared to the other
available resources. This ratio can be calculated by:
fj
SigmaAtrr ¼ Pn ; ð10Þ
i¼1 f i

fj is the attraction force with the proposed resource. fi is the

attraction force with each other resource available in the
list. n is the number of the available resources.
At the beginning of each process, a normalized amount
of money is offered for each MGL agent, which is the bid
source for the MG load (DeltaPris). The offer of each MGL
agent is a virtual price (VPris membership function) Fig. 5
estimated by the fuzzy logic system. The coordinator agent
affects the resource to the agent MGL with the best bid and
each time the MGL agent allocates any resource the bid is
subtracted from its amount of money (DeltaPris member-
ship function) Fig. 6. The FL system is used by the MG
load agent in order to obtain the best possible decision at
every round of the process and estimate the suitable virtual
price for the proposed resource without any knowledge
about the other agents’ state or bid.
In the proposed FL system, the trapezoidal fuzzy set is
used because this membership function demonstrates its
performance in such a problem and many other works in
Fig. 6 DeltaPris membership function
the literature (Boltzheim et al. 2001; Daneshvar 2011). A
system utilizing trapezoidal fuzzy sets could tackle the
problem with fewer rules and fewer linguistic values and
this is the aim to adopt this function in the proposed pro-
cess (Boltzheim et al. 2001).
Procedural steps of the process are as follows:
– Each load will identify the most important resources
using the above equation and sort them accordingly.
– The coordinator agent sends to the different agents
MGL the resource identifier.
– Using a control system based on fuzzy logic load, the
agent will pay a price for that resource, to determine
that price there are three inputs:
An amount of money (DeltaPris) is given to all agents
load, that amount is normalized between 0 and 1.

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344 D. O. E. Amine, J. Boumhidi

An attractive force (Attraction) between the load and the
resource, this force is needed to determine the importance
of the resource.
A ratio that reflects the importance of resource com-
pared to the available resources.
For the output (VPris), the suitable price for this
resource is determined by the load agent using a set of well
defined rules:
After each allocation, the value (deltaPris) will be
modified by the Eq. (11):
DeltaPrisðt þ 1Þ ¼ DeltaPrisðtÞ  VPrisðtÞ ð11Þ
In order to take a rational decision, each MGL agent is
guided by a set of linguistic rules that are carefully for-
mulated. The rules allow the agent to react rationally with
any case. For example, if there are several available
resources the bid will be small. On the other hand, if
there is just one resource the agent will offer the entire
price to gain the proposed generator because there is no
other choice. For the defuzzification process, we use the
center-of-gravity (COG) approach. The final value of
virtual price (VPris) is calculated through this COG
approach.
The example of some rules:
• RULE 1: IF DeltaPris IS High AND SigmaAtrr is High
AND Attraction is High THEN VPris IS High;
• RULE 2: IF DeltaPris IS Medium AND SigmaAtrr is
Low AND Attraction is Medium THEN VPris IS
Medium;
• RULE 3: IF DeltaPris IS Medium AND SigmaAtrr is
Low AND Attraction is Low THEN VPris IS Low;
• RULE 4: IF DeltaPris IS Low AND SigmaAtrr is Low
AND Attraction is Low THEN VPris Low;
The proposed algorithm of the assignment process is as
follows:

Algorithm: COALITIONS FORMATION ALGORITHM

Initial State
-initialise the distance matrix between the connected MGs
-For each MG predict the state
of the next hour (by equation (5))
If (balance>0) then
-Register as generator
-give the surplus value
Else
-Register as load
-Define the sorted list of resources depending of the force of attraction calculated
by equation (9)
End
Repeat
- get a generator from the list and set its ID for the entire load agents
-receive from all agent load the bid defined by the fuzzy logic system for this generator
- affect the generator to the agent load with the high bid
If (load > surplus) then
-delete the generator ID from the list of generators
-modify the DeltaPris of the winner agent by equation (11)
Else
- retrench the demand of the winner agent from surplus of the generator
-delete the load agent ID from list of load
-call the entire load agents in the new list to update their resource list
End Until
No load agent in the list or no generator is available

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Multi agent system based on law of gravity and fuzzy logic for coalition formation in multi…
Fig. 7 The fuzzy process diagram
The proposed process is illustrated in the Fig 7:
4 Simulation and results
The best way to build a multi-agent system (MAS) is to use
a multi-agent platform. A multi-agent platform presents a
set of necessary tools for the construction and commis-
sioning of agents within a specific environment.
These tools can also be used for the analysis and the test of
the MAS as well as the creation. These tools exist in the form
345
of programming environment (API) and applications
designed to help the developer. For this reason, the study of
the proposed MAS in this part is made by the JADE platform
(Java agent development framework). JADE is a multi-agent
platform created by the Tilab laboratory. JADE allows the
development of multi-agent systems and applications con-
form to the Foundation of Intelligent Physical Agent (FIPA)
compliant. It is implemented in Java and it provides the
necessary classes for the definition of the behavior of agents.
JADE has three main modules which are activated at each
start of the platform (required FIPA standards):
123
346 D. O. E. Amine, J. Boumhidi

• DF ‘‘Facilitator Directory’’ provides a service ‘‘Yellow In the cited works, the simulation relies on data which is
Pages’’ to the platform; generated randomly. For example in (Chao et al. 2013) the
• AC ‘‘Agent Communication Channel’’ handles com- power requirement parameter of MG is assumed to be a
munication between agents; random variable distributed from 200 MW to -200 MW
• AMS ‘‘System Management Agent’’ oversees the (note that the negative and positive signs mean that MG is a
registration of agents, their authentication, access and ‘‘buyer’’ or a ‘‘seller’’, respectively). In this work, a real
use of the system. curve of MG load has been used in order to make the
simulation more realistic. So, the variation around the day
The language of communication of the Platform JADE
of the MG demand such as the off-peak time and the peak
is FIPA-ACL (Agent Communication Language). The
times has been taken into consideration. The MG which is
ACLMessage class represents the messages which can be
considered in this study is a substation grid-connected
exchanged by the agents. The communication of messages
(Hernandez et al. 2013).
is done in asynchronous mode. When an agent wishes to
At the beginning of the process, the coordinator agent
send a message, it must create a new object ACL-Message,
provides to all the participating MGs the distance matrix
complete these fields with appropriate values and finally
and the necessary information about the generators. In
call the send() method. When an agent wishes to receive a
order to test the capability of the system, it is applied in a
message, it must employ The receive() method or the
variety of MG numbers and topology networks.
method blockingReceive(). All attributes of the class
The power balance of each MG is calculated based on
ACLMessage can be obtained and modified by the methods
the difference between the internal generations; which can
set/get(). The content of the messages can be text or objects
be generated randomly from the generation band for each
because Java serialization is supported.
hour in the day as mentioned in Fig. 8, and the estimated
In order to test the performance of our system, the JADE
load; which can be generated on the basis of the value in
platform is used. The aim is to model our environment
the curve of each hour ±20 %.
using agents, where each MG is presented by an agent in
Contrarily to the cited works, we denote that in the
the different stages of the coalition formation process.
simulation the peak time number is taken into considera-
To measure the performance of our system the JADE
tion and the balance value is taken based on the curve
platform is used. The aim is to model each MG by an agent
variation. Consequently, based on the sign of the balance
that can be able to present the MG in the different stages of
value which can be positive or negative, the MG estimates
the coalition formation process. So, a MG Agent is created
the state of the next period. A negative value means that the
and instanced according to the suitable number of MGs for
MG will be registered as a load, and a positive value means
the simulation. This agent has the necessary behavior to
that MG will be registered as generator.
register in the coordinator agent as load or generator based
Compared to results obtained by GT-CFS algorithm
on its state, act rationally in the assignment process and to
proposed in (Chao et al. 2013), we measures the dynamism
communicate with the coordinator agent. Besides, an agent
of our system for different numbers of MGs, respectively
is created called coordinator agent whose role is to generate
10, 20, 50, 80 and 100.We notice in Fig. 9, that for 10 and
randomly the distances between MGs, provide the MGs the
20 MGs the GT-CFS algorithm relatively performs better
necessary information and make the bills of the exchanged
than the proposed algorithm, but when the number of MGs
electricity. The price of the exchanged electricity is pro-
is increased the performance of our system is better than
vided by the market agent.
the GT-CFS algorithm. Besides and as mentioned before,
For the technical parameters of the simulation, the
the proposed system treats the problem of the GT-CFS
resistance between the MGs and the main grid is calculated
presented in Table 1 (the buyer is obliged to have all the
based on the transfer distance (Eq. 4). The voltage values
necessary money to buy the entire seller production even if
between the MGs is set to 22 kV and between the main
it is not needed). The increased number of the MGs allows
grid and the MGs is set to 50 kV which represent practical
more coalition formation among the MGs registered as
values in a variety of smart grid distribution networks
‘generator’ or ‘load’; this means that the number of the
(Machowski et al. 2008). The fraction number of power
MGs that can cooperate increases with the increased
transfer a = 0:02 according to the assumption in (Ma-
number of participating MGs. Consequently, the high intra-
chowski et al. 2008). For the resistivity q and the cross
MGs exchange means that there is a reduction of power
sectional area of the wires, the q takes the resistivity of the
loss comparing to the exchange with the main grid. In other
copper and is set to 1.724, the s is set to 21.2.
words, the high number of MGs injected in the same area
In order to verify the efficiency of the proposed system,
can directly affect the structure of transfer lines because the
we compare the result of our system with those obtained in
distances between the MGs will be automatically decreased
the proposed works in (Saad et al. 2012; Chao et al. 2013).
and the losses will be automatically decreased.

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Multi agent system based on law of gravity and fuzzy logic for coalition formation in multi…
Fig. 8 Load and generation
profile
Fig. 9 Number of coalitions
As we mentioned before, one of the aims of the pre-
sented system is to reduce the transfer loss by the coali-
tions’ formation. The transfer loss of the proposed system
is compared to the non cooperative case where each MG
Fig. 10 Loss comparison
347
can exchange the power with the main grid only (selling
or buying), also a comparison is made with the proposed
system in (Saad et al. 2012) called NMS. The simulation
is made for different numbers of MGs, respectively 10,
20, 30, 40, 50, 75 and 100. The difference in the transfer
loss between the non cooperative case and the cooperative
case in the proposed system can be noticed in Fig. 10. The
transfer loss in the non cooperative case is high for dif-
ferent numbers of participating MGs. We can notice too,
that with the increased number of MGs the transfer loss is
still higher in the non cooperative case, compared to our
proposed system. The loss is decreased because there are
more MGs which can be resourced to each other with
short distances. Compared to NMS algorithm, we remark
that the proposed algorithm performs better regarding the
loss reduction especially with the increased number of the
MGs.
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348
Fig. 11 Average utility of
coalitions in 24-H
Figure 11 shows the number of MGs in a coalition and
also the variation of the average utility of MGs in a
coalition during a day for a total number of 100 MGs. The
simulation results show that the number of MGs in coali-
tions and the average utility are changing around the day,
due to the variation of the production and load of the MGs.
Even if we observe a high average number of MGs per
coalition during the peak period, we can explain it as a
normal consequence because there is more consumption of
electricity and each MGL tries to meet its demand by
searching for the available MGs with a surplus of energy.
Besides, we remark that the MGs that are registered as
generators do not have a big surplus due to their high
demand at those times, so the MGs load need to exploit all
available MGs generator opposite to the off-peak time
when the MGs generator have a big surplus and only one
MG generator can feed more than one MG load. On the
other hand, the number of non participating MGs is very
small due to the number of the MGs with the Self-suffi-
ciency; hence we conclude that the number of the partici-
pating MGs in the exchange is so close to the total number.
Finally, we notice that the highest utility value is registered
in off-peak times which can be caused by the important
quantity of exchanged power among the MGs even if the
number of MGs in coalition is not as registered as in the
peak times.
5 Conclusion
This paper has presented a multi-agent system for coalition
formation based on the law of gravity and the fuzzy logic.
The system allows each of the MGs modeled by the agents
to find the best partner(s) in order to minimize the loss and
to achieve the optimal dispatch of energy among all
123
D. O. E. Amine, J. Boumhidi
participating MGs. At first, the law of gravity has been
used by each MG that requires energy to find the best
resources that offer the suitable energy with the minimal
loss. In order to avoid the problem of the competition of the
multiple demands about the same resource, fuzzy logic has
been used in order to organize the assignment of the
resources. Through simulation results, the effectiveness of
the proposed system is verified where comparative results
prove its performance, compared to the non-cooperative
case and other works. The proposed system proves its
ability to achieve the aims presented in the reduction of the
loss and the optimal dispatch of energy among the MGs. In
the future extension of our work, the notion of expert in the
generation of the fuzzy rules will be examined and this task
will be automatically made based on the machine learning
technique. For this reason, a study will be made to analyze
and find the suitable technique to make the system more
precise without the intervention of any expert.
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