Congestion game is a widely used model for modern networked applications. A central issue in such applications is that the selfish behavior of the participants may result in resource overloading and negative externalities for the system participants. In this work, we propose a pricing mechanism that guarantees the sub-linear increase of the time-cumulative violation of the resource load constraints. The feature of our method is that it is resource-centric in the sense that it depends on the congestion state of the resources and not on specific characteristics of the system participants. This feature makes our mechanism scalable, flexible, and privacy-preserving. Moreover, we show by numerical simulations that our pricing mechanism has no significant effect on the agents' welfare in contrast to the improvement of the capacity violation.
A distributed, hierarchical, market based approach is introduced to solve the economic dispatch problem. The approach requires only a minimal amount of information to be shared between a central market operator and the end-users. Price signals from the market operator are sent down to end-user device agents, which in turn respond with power schedules. Intermediate congestion agents make sure that local power constraints are satisfied and any potential congestion is avoided by adding local pricing differences. Our results show that in 20% of the evaluated scenarios the solutions are identical t…
the University of Tokyo（东京大学）；Tokyo Institute of Technology（东京工业大学）
Traffic congestion is a serious problem in urban areas. Dynamic congestion pricing is one of the useful schemes to eliminate traffic congestion in strategic scale. However, in the reality, an optimal dynamic congestion pricing is very difficult or impossible to determine theoretically, because road networks are usually large and complicated, and behavior of road users is uncertain. To account for this challenge, this work proposes a dynamic congestion pricing method using deep reinforcement learning (DRL). It is designed to eliminate traffic congestion based on observable data in general large…
Congestion pricing has long been hailed as a means to mitigate traffic congestion; however, its practical adoption has been limited due to the resulting social inequity issue, e.g., low-income users are priced out off certain roads. This issue has spurred interest in the design of equitable mechanisms that aim to refund the collected toll revenues as lump-sum transfers to users. Although revenue refunding has been extensively studied for over three decades, there has been no thorough characterization of how such schemes can be designed to simultaneously achieve system efficiency and equity obj…
A wide range of price-based congestion management schemes were proposed in the literature ranging from marginal cost road pricing to trip based multimodal pricing. The underlying models were formulated under different theoretical assumptions and with varying, and sometimes conflicting objectives. This paper presents a unifying framework under which different approaches can be compared based on their respective assumptions. The unifying modelling framework is referred to as trip pricing model, which extends path-differentiated pricing to multimodal paths, i.e., trips on whatever mode or combina…
In this paper, we consider the problem of resource congestion control for competing online learning agents. On the basis of non-cooperative game as the model for the interaction between the agents, and the noisy online mirror ascent as the model for rational behavior of the agents, we propose a novel pricing mechanism which gives the agents incentives for sustainable use of the resources. Our mechanism is distributed and resource-centric, in the sense that it is done by the resources themselves and not by a centralized instance, and that it is based rather on the congestion state of the resour…
Routing controllability of connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) has been shown to reduce the adverse effects of selfish routing on the network efficiency. However, the assumption that CAV owners would readily allow themselves to be controlled externally by a central agency for the good of the system is unrealistic. In this paper, we propose a joint routing and pricing control scheme that aims to incentivize CAVs to seek centrally controlled system-optimal (SO) routing by saving on tolls while user equilibrium (UE) seeking human-driven vehicles (HVs) are subject to a congestion charge. The …
Are rewards or penalties more effective in influencing user behavior? This work compares the effectiveness of subsidies and tolls in incentivizing user behavior in congestion games. The predominantly studied method of influencing user behavior in network routing problems is to institute taxes which alter users' observed costs in a manner that causes their self-interested choices to more closely align with a system-level objective. Another conceivable method to accomplish the same goal is to subsidize the users' actions that are preferable from a system-level perspective. We show that, when use…
The recent emergence of navigational tools has changed traffic patterns and has now enabled new types of congestion-aware routing control like dynamic road pricing. Using the fundamental diagram of traffic flows - applied in macroscopic and mesoscopic traffic modeling - the article introduces a new N-player dynamic routing game with explicit congestion dynamics. The model is well-posed and can reproduce heterogeneous departure times and congestion spill back phenomena. However, as Nash equilibrium computations are PPAD-complete, solving the game becomes intractable for large but realistic numb…
In this paper, we study how to alleviate highway traffic congestion by encouraging plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles to stop at a charging station around peak congestion times. Specifically, we design a pricing policy to make the charging price dynamic and dependent on the traffic congestion, predicted via the cell transmission model, and the availability of charging spots. Furthermore, we develop a novel framework to model how this policy affects the drivers' decisions by formulating a mixed-integer potential game. Technically, we introduce the concept of "road-to-station" (r2s) and "stati…
The problem of heat and electricity pricing in combined heat and power systems regarding the time scales of electricity and heat, as well as thermal energy quality, is studied. Based on the asynchronous coordinated dispatch of the combined heat and power system, an energy-grade double pricing mechanism is proposed. Under the pricing mechanism, the resulting merchandise surplus of the heat system operator at each heat dispatch interval can be decomposed into interpretable parts and its revenue adequacy can be guaranteed for all heat dispatch intervals. And the electric power system operator's r…
The emergence of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) provides both challenges and opportunities for the planning and operations of distribution systems. These resources can be deployed in a manner that is either complementary to or in competition with traditional network operations and planning as the DERs can provide numerous important services to grid operators and utilities. This paper presents a novel method to estimate the trade off between DERs and traditional investments using a dynamic Peak-Load Pricing (PLP) methodology. PLP is a pricing strategy for a time-dependent quantity of a non…
Zonal pricing is a well-suited mechanism to incentivize grid-supporting behavior of profit-maximizing producers and consumers operating on a large-scale power system. In zonal electricity markets, local system operators create individual price zones, which provide appropriate price signals depending on local grid conditions such as an excess or shortage of electrical energy in certain regions. In this paper, a real-time zonal pricing controller for AC power networks is presented that ensures frequency and voltage stability as well as Pareto efficiency of the resulting closed-loop equilibria. B…
