The University of Southampton
University of Southampton Institutional Repository

An Online Mechanism for Multi-Unit Demand and its Application to Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle Charging

An Online Mechanism for Multi-Unit Demand and its Application to Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle Charging
An Online Mechanism for Multi-Unit Demand and its Application to Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle Charging
We develop an online mechanism for the allocation of an expiring resource to a dynamic agent population. Each agent has a non-increasing marginal valuation function for the resource, and an upper limit on the number of units that can be allocated in any period. We propose two versions on a truthful allocation mechanism. Each modifies the decisions of a greedy online assignment algorithm by sometimes cancelling an allocation of resources. One version makes this modification immediately upon an allocation decision while a second waits until the point at which an agent departs the market. Adopting a prior-free framework, we show that the second approach has better worst-case allocative efficiency and is more scalable. On the other hand, the first approach (with immediate cancellation) may be easier in practice because it does not need to reclaim units previously allocated. We consider an application to recharging plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs). Using data from a real-world trial of PHEVs in the UK, we demonstrate higher system performance than a fixed price system, performance comparable with a standard, but non-truthful scheduling heuristic, and the ability to support 50% more vehicles at the same fuel cost than a simple randomized policy.
175-230
Robu, Valentin
36b30550-208e-48d4-8f0e-8ff6976cf566
Gerding, Enrico H.
d9e92ee5-1a8c-4467-a689-8363e7743362
Stein, Sebastian
cb2325e7-5e63-475e-8a69-9db2dfbdb00b
Parkes, David C.
3c873bcd-d181-4d6f-9347-ac345399f8d3
Rogers, Alex
f9130bc6-da32-474e-9fab-6c6cb8077fdc
Jennings, Nicholas R.
ab3d94cc-247c-4545-9d1e-65873d6cdb30
Robu, Valentin
36b30550-208e-48d4-8f0e-8ff6976cf566
Gerding, Enrico H.
d9e92ee5-1a8c-4467-a689-8363e7743362
Stein, Sebastian
cb2325e7-5e63-475e-8a69-9db2dfbdb00b
Parkes, David C.
3c873bcd-d181-4d6f-9347-ac345399f8d3
Rogers, Alex
f9130bc6-da32-474e-9fab-6c6cb8077fdc
Jennings, Nicholas R.
ab3d94cc-247c-4545-9d1e-65873d6cdb30

Robu, Valentin, Gerding, Enrico H., Stein, Sebastian, Parkes, David C., Rogers, Alex and Jennings, Nicholas R. (2013) An Online Mechanism for Multi-Unit Demand and its Application to Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle Charging. Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, 48, 175-230.

Record type: Article

Abstract

We develop an online mechanism for the allocation of an expiring resource to a dynamic agent population. Each agent has a non-increasing marginal valuation function for the resource, and an upper limit on the number of units that can be allocated in any period. We propose two versions on a truthful allocation mechanism. Each modifies the decisions of a greedy online assignment algorithm by sometimes cancelling an allocation of resources. One version makes this modification immediately upon an allocation decision while a second waits until the point at which an agent departs the market. Adopting a prior-free framework, we show that the second approach has better worst-case allocative efficiency and is more scalable. On the other hand, the first approach (with immediate cancellation) may be easier in practice because it does not need to reclaim units previously allocated. We consider an application to recharging plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs). Using data from a real-world trial of PHEVs in the UK, we demonstrate higher system performance than a fixed price system, performance comparable with a standard, but non-truthful scheduling heuristic, and the ability to support 50% more vehicles at the same fuel cost than a simple randomized policy.

Text
robu13a.pdf - Other
Download (616kB)

More information

Accepted/In Press date: 1 September 2013
Published date: 2013
Organisations: Electronics & Computer Science

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 356347
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/356347
PURE UUID: dbc3c2dc-8b60-4868-ae9a-e3fb6d4f16a4
ORCID for Enrico H. Gerding: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-7200-552X
ORCID for Sebastian Stein: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0003-2858-8857

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 02 Sep 2013 20:23
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 03:30

Export record

Contributors

Author: Valentin Robu
Author: Enrico H. Gerding ORCID iD
Author: Sebastian Stein ORCID iD
Author: David C. Parkes
Author: Alex Rogers
Author: Nicholas R. Jennings

Download statistics

Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.

View more statistics

Atom RSS 1.0 RSS 2.0

Contact ePrints Soton: eprints@soton.ac.uk

ePrints Soton supports OAI 2.0 with a base URL of http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/cgi/oai2

This repository has been built using EPrints software, developed at the University of Southampton, but available to everyone to use.

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue without changing your settings, we will assume that you are happy to receive cookies on the University of Southampton website.

×