Industrial load management using multi-agent reinforcement learning for rescheduling

Industrial load management plays an important role in the balance of energy consumption and electricity generation, which is increasingly fluctuating due to the growing share of renewable energies. Manufacturing companies are able to adapt their energy consumption by considering energy aspects in their production schedule. It may even be beneficial to temporarily force production resources into idle states and to thus reduce energy demand for a limited period. However, the resulting scheduling problem is very complex and at the same time should be executed in real-time. This paper presents an approach for industrial load management using multi-agent reinforcement learning for energy-oriented rescheduling. A simulation study serves to validate the approach. The results show good solutions and at the same time low computational expense compared to a metaheuristic approach using simulated annealing.