Tournament | PowerTAC

Join Us!

Watch the progress of the 2019 Power TAC tournament

Power TAC is a competitive simulation of future retail electric power markets, in which the competitors are retail "brokers" who buy and sell power in both wholesale and retail markets. The wholesale market is an abstraction of typical day-ahead markets in North America and Europe, and the retail market is a tariff market, in which customers are able to choose among tariff contract offerings from the competing brokers. Customers are models of household, business, electric vehicle and institutional users of electric power, as well as small-scale producers of power that own solar arrays or small wind turbines.

Follow the tournament here. Up top are running and pending games; for running games there’s a link to the visualizer. For an overview of the current round with scores, click here.

Current Game Specification

Changes to the Power TAC competition for 2019 are focused on security, stability, and minor improvements in some of the customer models. None of that affects the specification.

Current Power TAC game specifications

Are you a computational IS researcher? Consider participating in or presenting at our summer workshop! Policy, Awareness, Sustainability and Systems: Next Generation Research Challenges for Computation IS Research in Energy, Mobility and the Sustainable Economy at the Energy Economics Institute, University of Cologne on July 25th & 26th 2019.

Power TAC tournament participants are particularly welcome to submit abstracts. The workshop will kick-off with a networking dinner on Thursday July 25. The main workshop will take place on the 26th and all participants will be provided accommodations for one night. There is no registration fee, however, the space is limited and will be provided on first come, first served basis.

Forming a Team

We suggest cross-discipline teams if possible, with strong developers and team members with experience or interest in economics and trading, machine learning, and/or energy domain knowledge.

The 2019 tournament finals will be held on July 2 – 16. If you’d like more information on participation, please contact us.

Scroll down to see tournament history, winning teams and partners.

Broker Developers

The fundamental starting point for broker development strategy is to look at the behaviour and performance of other brokers from past tournaments. You can also download existing brokers and run them against your own agents. The version for the 2019 tournament will be 1.6.0 or later; if you are preparing for the 2019 competition you can also run a development snapshot.

Power TAC Broker Repository

Get Going!

After you put a team together, follow the instructions for installing the Power TAC server and building a broker agent:

The Power TAC wiki

PowerTAC Partners

This project was created with the cooperation of the following affiliations:

Previous Competitions

2018
2017
2016
2015
2014
2013
2012

Power TAC 2018 Final Ranking

The ranking for the 2018 Power TAC competition was as follows:

AgentUDE
VidyutVanika
CrocodileAgent

The detailed results can be found here.

A machine-readable version can be found in the CSV file, including a DOI per game.

Schedule

The schedule for the 2018 competition was

Trial 1: May 14 – May 25, 2018.
Trial 2: June 4 – June 15, 2018.
Qualification rounds: June 25 – July 6, 2018.
Finals: July 16 – July 27, 2018.

Game Specification

The Power TAC 2018 game specification was released on December 13, 2017.

Changes for 2018 are focused on stability, on simplifying interaction with the balancing market, and on encouraging more vigorous competition, and are highlighted by change bars in the margins. See Sections 3.1.2, 6, and 8.5 for details.

Power TAC 2017 Final Ranking

The ranking for the 2017 Power TAC competition was as follows:

AgentUDE
fimtac
SPOT

The detailed results can be found here.

A machine-readable version can be found in the CSV file, including a DOI per game.

Schedule

The schedule for the 2017 competition was

Trial 1: March 27 – March 31, 2017.
Trial 2: April 18 – April 25, 2017.
Qualification rounds: May 15 – May 17, 2017.
Finals: June 12 – June 21, 2017.

Game Specification

The Power TAC 2017 game specification was released on February 13, 2017.

Changes for 2017 are focused on a more realistic wholesale market, reducing the market power of brokers by making the simulation scenario into a relatively small part of a larger market, and are highlighted by change bars in the margins. See Section 5.3 for details.

Power TAC 2016 Final Ranking

The ranking for the 2016 Power TAC competition was as follows:

maxon16
COLDPower
AgentUDE

The detailed results can be found here.

A machine-readable version can be found in the CSV file, including a DOI per game.

Schedule

The schedule for the 2016 competition was

Qualification rounds: May 17 – April 25, 2016.
Seeding round: June 1 – June 15, 2016.
Finals: June 30 – July 6, 2016.

Game Specification

The Power TAC 2016 competition game specification was released on January 12, 2016.

The primary change from previous competitions is in the assessment of distribution costs. In previous competitions, brokers were charged for transported energy. This mechanism provides no incentive for brokers to manage peak demand and is a poor model of real-world costs. Starting with server version 1.3.1, brokers will pay for customer connections and for their contributions to peak-demand events. In addition, brokers will see higher costs for balancing services, eliminating the possibility of a perverse incentive to carry a "short" market position into the current timeslot. More information is available in Section 7 of the specification.

Power TAC 2015 Final Ranking

The ranking for the 2015 Power TAC competition was as follows:

Maxon15
TacTex
CUHKTac

The detailed results can be found here.

A machine-readable version can be found in the CSV file, including a DOI per game.

Schedule

The schedule for the 2015 competition was

Qualification rounds: April 8 – April 17, 2015.
Finals: April 27 – April 30, 2015.

Game Specification

The Power TAC 2015 game specification is nearly the same as for Power TAC 2014, except for the treatment of negative tariff signup payments.

Power TAC 2014 Final Ranking

The ranking for the 2014 Power TAC competition was as follows:

AgentUDE
cwiBroker
Crocodile Agent

Schedule

The schedule for the 2014 competition was

Trial 1: February 6 – February 10, 2014.
Trial 2: March 25 – March 28, 2014.
Qualification rounds: April 22 – April 30, 2014.
Finals: May 5 – May 6, 2014.

Game Specification

The 2014 Game Specification is available here.

Power TAC 2013 Final Ranking

The ranking for the 2013 Power TAC competition was as follows:

TacTex
cwiBroker
MILLBroker

Schedule

The schedule for the 2013 competition was

Trial 1: March 18 – March 22, 2013.
Trial 2: April 22 – April 26, 2013.
Trial 3: May 28 – May 31, 2013.
Trial 4: June 19 – June 22, 2013.
Qualification rounds: July 8 – July 11, 2013.
Finals: July 15 – July 16, 2013.

Game Specification

The 2013 Game Specification is available here.

Power TAC 2012 Pilot Trials

We started Power TAC in 2012 with a series of pilot trials which began the process of building the robust, growing simulation platform it is today.

Inaugural Competitors

Mertacor (Aristotle University, Thessaloniki)

CrocodileAgent (Zagreb University)

LARGEPower (Rotterdam School of Management)

KAIST_TAC (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology)

TacTex (University of Texas at Austin)

AstonTAC (Aston University, UK)

SotonPower (University of Southampton, UK)

Maxon (Westfaelische Hochschule)

Schedule

The schedule for the 2012 competition was

1st round: May 2012
Demonstration rounds: June 4 – June 5, 2012.
2nd round: September 24 – September 27, 2012.
3rd round: November 30 – December 7, 2012.

Game Specification

The 2012 Game Specification is available here.

Dorothy.Grandia@ewi.uni-koeln.de

+31 (0) 6 2454 0859