A mechanism design approach for allocation of commodities

We deploy a mechanism design approach for allocating a divisible commodity (electricity in our example) among consumers. We consider each consumer with an associated personal valuation function of the energy resource during a certain time interval. We aim to select the optimal consumption profile for every user avoiding consumption peaks when the total required energy could exceed the energy production. The mechanism will be able to drive users in shifting energy consumptions in different hours of the day. We start by presenting a very basic Vickrey-Clarke-Groves mechanism, we discuss its weakness and propose several more complex variants. This is an extended abstract, for additional details we provide a technical report [1]. Copyright © by the paper's authors. Copying permitted for private and academic purposes.