Portfolio Optimization for Electricity Market Participation with NPSO-LRS

Massive changes in electricity markets have occurred during the last years, as a consequence of the massive introduction of renewable energies. These changes have led to a restructuring process that had an impact throughout the electrical industry. The case of the electricity markets is a relevant example, where new forms of trading emerged and new market entities were created. With these changes, the complexity of electricity markets increased as well, which brought out the need from the involved players for adequate support to their decision making process. Artificial intelligence plays an important role in the development of these tools. Multi-agent systems, in particular, have been largely explored by stakeholders in the sector. Artificial intelligence also provides intelligent solutions for optimization, which enable troubleshooting in a short time and with very similar results to those achieved by deterministic techniques, which usually result from very high execution times. The work presented in this paper aims at solving a portfolio optimization problem for electricity markets participation, using an approach based on NPSO-LRS (New Particle Swarm Optimization with Local Random Search). The proposed method is used to assist decisions of electricity market players.This work has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 641794 (project DREAM-GO) and from FEDER Funds through COMPETE program and from National Funds through FCT under the project UID/EEA/00760/2013info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Initial Solution Heuristic for Portfolio Optimization of Electricity Markets Participation

Meta-heuristic search methods are used to find near optimal global solutions for difficult optimization problems. These meta-heuristic processes usually require some kind of knowledge to overcome the local optimum locations. One way to achieve diversification is to start the search procedure from a solution already obtained through another method. Since this solution is already validated the algorithm will converge easily to a greater global solution. In this work, several well-known meta-heuristics are used to solve the problem of electricity markets participation portfolio optimization. Their search performance is compared to the performance of a proposed hybrid method (ad-hoc heuristic to generate the initial solution, which is combined with the search method). The addressed problem is the portfolio optimization for energy markets participation, where there are different markets where it is possible to negotiate. In this way the result will be the optimal allocation of electricity in the different markets in order to obtain the maximum return quantified through the objective function.This work has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 641794 (project DREAM-GO) and from FEDER Funds through COMPETE program and from National Funds through FCT under the project UID/EEA/00760/2013.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Initial Solution Heuristic for Portfolio Optimization of Electricity Markets Participation

Meta-heuristic search methods are used to find near optimal global solutions for difficult optimization problems. These meta-heuristic processes usually require some kind of knowledge to overcome the local optimum locations. One way to achieve diversification is to start the search procedure from a solution already obtained through another method. Since this solution is already validated the algorithm will converge easily to a greater global solution. In this work, several well-known meta-heuristics are used to solve the problem of electricity markets participation portfolio optimization. Their search performance is compared to the performance of a proposed hybrid method (ad-hoc heuristic to generate the initial solution, which is combined with the search method). The addressed problem is the portfolio optimization for energy markets participation, where there are different markets where it is possible to negotiate. In this way the result will be the optimal allocation of electricity in the different markets in order to obtain the maximum return quantified through the objective function.This work has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 641794 (project DREAM-GO) and from FEDER Funds through COMPETE program and from National Funds through FCT under the project UID/EEA/00760/2013.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

An Ad-Hoc Initial Solution Heuristic for Metaheuristic Optimization of Energy Market Participation Portfolios

The deregulation of the electricity sector has culminated in the introduction of competitive markets. In addition, the emergence of new forms of electric energy production, namely the production of renewable energy, has brought additional changes in electricity market operation. Renewable energy has significant advantages, but at the cost of an intermittent character. The generation variability adds new challenges for negotiating players, as they have to deal with a new level of uncertainty. In order to assist players in their decisions, decision support tools enabling assisting players in their negotiations are crucial. Artificial intelligence techniques play an important role in this decision support, as they can provide valuable results in rather small execution times, namely regarding the problem of optimizing the electricity markets participation portfolio. This paper proposes a heuristic method that provides an initial solution that allows metaheuristic techniques to improve their results through a good initialization of the optimization process. Results show that by using the proposed heuristic, multiple metaheuristic optimization methods are able to improve their solutions in a faster execution time, thus providing a valuable contribution for players support in energy markets negotiations.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Otimização de Portfólio de Participação em Mercados de Energia Elétrica

Na atualidade são visíveis as mudanças ocorridas nos mercados de energia elétrica, em consequência da introdução maciça de energia proveniente de fontes renováveis. Pelo facto de serem renováveis são de grande interesse para a população, pois o custo de produção e as emissões de gases, que contribuem para o efeito de estufa durante o seu funcionamento, são nulas. Estas características são essenciais para as mais altas chefias das instituições europeias, que impuseram políticas para promover a utilização e instalação de tecnologia para o aproveitamento das fontes que facultam as energias renováveis. Os estados membros europeus mostraram-se recetíveis a estas políticas e incentivaram o investimento nestas tecnologias. Deste modo, houve uma enorme introdução de energias de arater intermitente e instável que condicionaram o normal funcionamento dos sistemas de energia elétrica, o que, por sua vez, conduziu a inúmeras mudanças no setor. Esta reestruturação teve impacto em todo o setor, como é o caso dos mercados de energia elétrica, onde surgiram novas formas de negociação e foram criadas novas entidades de mercado. Com estas alterações, a complexidade dos mercados de energia elétrica aumentou, assim como a imprevisibilidade dos mesmos. Por isso, tornou-se essencial a existência de formas de apoio que auxilie a tomada de decisão por parte das entidades de mercado. Com a emergência de todas estas exigências, tornou-se fundamental o desenvolvimento de ferramentas para auxílio na tomada de decisão. Estas ferramentas ajudam as diversas entidades a perceber o funcionamento dos mercados e prever as interações que ocorrerão entre as diferentes entidades existentes no mercado. A inteligência artificial teve um papel crucial no desenvolvimento destas ferramentas, nomeadamente os sistemas multiagente, que têm sido uma solução muito explorada pelos interessados no setor. Estes, utilizam várias técnicas da inteligência artificial, o que lhes permite serem adaptativos a diferentes situações, simular os diferentes agentes existentes no mercado, permitir diversos tipos de negociação, e ainda aprender ao longo da sua utilização. No entanto, apesar de estas ferramentas atualmente estarem voltadas para o estudo do funcionamento do sistema elétrico, deixam de lado o contexto de negociação e descartam o apoio às decisões do vendedor/comprador de eletricidade. O largo âmbito de aplicação da inteligência artificial fornece diversas experiências, nomeadamente ferramentas de otimização meta-heurísticas, que permitem a resolução de problemas num curto espaço de tempo, e com uma qualidade de resultados muito próxima daquela alcançada por técnicas determinísticas à custa de um elevado tempo de execução. O trabalho desenvolvido nesta dissertação tem como objeto de estudo a falha supra referenciada. Sugere uma metodologia de negociação da energia elétrica que permite vender e comprar a mesma em diferentes mercados com regras específicas, e indica um portfólio de participação nos vários mercados em que cada interveniente pode negociar. A metodologia apresentada permite gerar cenários realistas a partir do resultado da otimização do portfólio, que podem ser tomados em consideração na decisão dos intervenientes de mercado, e assim conseguirem retirar o máximo proveito das suas negociações. Os resultados apresentados foram obtidos através da utilização de dados reais provenientes dos diferentes operadores de mercados. Estes dados são válidos para a formulação de diferentes cenários que possam ser considerados no ato da negociação.Nowadays, there are several relevant changes in electricity markets, which are a consequence of the massive introduction of renewable energies. The fact that they are renewable is of great interest for all of us, because the cost of production of this energy is null and emissions of greenhouse gases are also zero during operation. This feature aroused great interest in the high European institutions that have imposed policies to promote the use and installation of technology for the use of sources that provide renewable energy. European member states have shown receptiveness to these policies, potentiating the investment in these technologies and thus hearing a great introduction of intermittent and unstable energy that conditioned the normal operation of power systems and led to further inevitable changes in an already under-restructuring power and energy sector. This restructuring had an impact throughout the industry, as is the case of the electricity markets, where new forms of trading emerged and new market entities were created. With these changes the complexity of electricity markets increased as well as the associated unpredictability. This made is essential to have support tools to aid decision making by the arket entities. With the emergence of all these requirements it is fundamental to develop tools in order to assist the decision-making process, and to help understanding the functioning of markets and predict the interactions that occur between the existing market entities. Artificial intelligence has an important role in the development of these tools. Multi-agent systems, in particular, have been much explored by stakeholders in the sector as a valid solution. They use various techniques of artificial intelligence that allows them to be adaptive to any situation, to simulate the different existing players in the market, allowing any type of trading and enabling them to learn the logo of its use. However, these tools are directed to study of the proper functioning of the electrical system, leaving aside the negotiation context and the decision support for the seller / buyer of electricity. The applicability of artificial intelligence is not limited to electricity markets. It is also applied in many other areas due to its optimization tools that enable solving problems in a short time and with very similar results to those achieved by deterministic techniques, at the cost of a high execution time. The work in this dissertation addresses the above-mentioned gaps, and suggests an electricity trading decision support methodology to buy and sell electricity in different markets with specific rules. This is done by suggesting a portfolio of market participation that each party can perform. The presented methodology generates realistic scenarios from the portfolio optimization of the results that may be taken into account in the decision of market participants; and allow these players to take full advantage of it. The results were obtained through the use of real data stemmed from different market operators, which are valid for the generation of different scenarios that can be taken into account in the negotiation act