11,156 research outputs found
A New Approach to Electricity Market Clearing With Uniform Purchase Price and Curtailable Block Orders
The European market clearing problem is characterized by a set of
heterogeneous orders and rules that force the implementation of heuristic and
iterative solving methods. In particular, curtailable block orders and the
uniform purchase price (UPP) pose serious difficulties. A block is an order
that spans over multiple hours, and can be either fully accepted or fully
rejected. The UPP prescribes that all consumers pay a common price, i.e., the
UPP, in all the zones, while producers receive zonal prices, which can differ
from one zone to another.
The market clearing problem in the presence of both the UPP and block orders
is a major open issue in the European context. The UPP scheme leads to a
non-linear optimization problem involving both primal and dual variables,
whereas block orders introduce multi-temporal constraints and binary variables
into the problem. As a consequence, the market clearing problem in the presence
of both blocks and the UPP can be regarded as a non-linear integer programming
problem involving both primal and dual variables with complementary and
multi-temporal constraints.
The aim of this paper is to present a non-iterative and heuristic-free
approach for solving the market clearing problem in the presence of both
curtailable block orders and the UPP. The solution is exact, with no
approximation up to the level of resolution of current market data. By
resorting to an equivalent UPP formulation, the proposed approach results in a
mixed-integer linear program, which is built starting from a non-linear integer
bilevel programming problem. Numerical results using real market data are
reported to show the effectiveness of the proposed approach. The model has been
implemented in Python, and the code is freely available on a public repository.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figure
Market-Based Task Allocation Mechanisms for Limited Capacity Suppliers
This paper reports on the design and comparison of two economically-inspired mechanisms for task allocation in environments where sellers have finite production capacities and a cost structure composed of a fixed overhead cost and a constant marginal cost. Such mechanisms are required when a system consists of multiple self-interested stakeholders that each possess private information that is relevant to solving a system-wide problem. Against this background, we first develop a computationally tractable centralised mechanism that finds the set of producers that have the lowest total cost in providing a certain demand (i.e. it is efficient). We achieve this by extending the standard Vickrey-Clarke-Groves mechanism to allow for multi-attribute bids and by introducing a novel penalty scheme such that producers are incentivised to truthfully report their capacities and their costs. Furthermore our extended mechanism is able to handle sellers' uncertainty about their production capacity and ensures that individual agents find it profitable to participate in the mechanism. However, since this first mechanism is centralised, we also develop a complementary decentralised mechanism based around the continuous double auction. Again because of the characteristics of our domain, we need to extend the standard form of this protocol by introducing a novel clearing rule based around an order book. With this modified protocol, we empirically demonstrate (with simple trading strategies) that the mechanism achieves high efficiency. In particular, despite this simplicity, the traders can still derive a profit from the market which makes our mechanism attractive since these results are a likely lower bound on their expected returns
Revisiting minimum profit conditions in uniform price day-ahead electricity auctions
We examine the problem of clearing day-ahead electricity market auctions
where each bidder, whether a producer or consumer, can specify a minimum profit
or maximum payment condition constraining the acceptance of a set of bid curves
spanning multiple time periods in locations connected through a transmission
network with linear constraints. Such types of conditions are for example
considered in the Spanish and Portuguese day-ahead markets. This helps
describing the recovery of start-up costs of a power plant, or analogously for
a large consumer, utility reduced by a constant term. A new market model is
proposed with a corresponding MILP formulation for uniform locational price
day-ahead auctions, handling bids with a minimum profit or maximum payment
condition in a uniform and computationally-efficient way. An exact
decomposition procedure with sparse strengthened Benders cuts derived from the
MILP formulation is also proposed. The MILP formulation and the decomposition
procedure are similar to computationally-efficient approaches previously
proposed to handle so-called block bids according to European market rules,
though the clearing conditions could appear different at first sight. Both
solving approaches are also valid to deal with both kinds of bids
simultaneously, as block bids with a minimum acceptance ratio, generalizing
fully indivisible block bids, are but a special case of the MP bids introduced
here. We argue in favour of the MP bids by comparing them to previous models
for minimum profit conditions proposed in the academic literature, and to the
model for minimum income conditions used by the Spanish power exchange OMIE
On Computability of Equilibria in Markets with Production
Although production is an integral part of the Arrow-Debreu market model,
most of the work in theoretical computer science has so far concentrated on
markets without production, i.e., the exchange economy. This paper takes a
significant step towards understanding computational aspects of markets with
production.
We first define the notion of separable, piecewise-linear concave (SPLC)
production by analogy with SPLC utility functions. We then obtain a linear
complementarity problem (LCP) formulation that captures exactly the set of
equilibria for Arrow-Debreu markets with SPLC utilities and SPLC production,
and we give a complementary pivot algorithm for finding an equilibrium. This
settles a question asked by Eaves in 1975 of extending his complementary pivot
algorithm to markets with production.
Since this is a path-following algorithm, we obtain a proof of membership of
this problem in PPAD, using Todd, 1976. We also obtain an elementary proof of
existence of equilibrium (i.e., without using a fixed point theorem),
rationality, and oddness of the number of equilibria. We further give a proof
of PPAD-hardness for this problem and also for its restriction to markets with
linear utilities and SPLC production. Experiments show that our algorithm runs
fast on randomly chosen examples, and unlike previous approaches, it does not
suffer from issues of numerical instability. Additionally, it is strongly
polynomial when the number of goods or the number of agents and firms is
constant. This extends the result of Devanur and Kannan (2008) to markets with
production.
Finally, we show that an LCP-based approach cannot be extended to PLC
(non-separable) production, by constructing an example which has only
irrational equilibria.Comment: An extended abstract will appear in SODA 201
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Network-constrained models of liberalized electricity markets: the devil is in the details
Numerical models for electricity markets are frequently used to inform and support decisions. How robust are the results? Three research groups used the same, realistic data set for generators, demand and transmission network as input for their numerical models. The results coincide when predicting competitive market results. In the strategic case in which large generators can exercise market power, the predicted prices differed significantly. The results are highly sensitive to assumptions about market design, timing of the market and assumptions about constraints on the rationality of generators. Given the same assumptions the results coincide. We provide a checklist for users to understand the implications of different modelling assumptions
Catching Cheats: Detecting Strategic Manipulation in Distributed Optimisation of Electric Vehicle Aggregators
Given the rapid rise of electric vehicles (EVs) worldwide, and the ambitious
targets set for the near future, the management of large EV fleets must be seen
as a priority. Specifically, we study a scenario where EV charging is managed
through self-interested EV aggregators who compete in the day-ahead market in
order to purchase the electricity needed to meet their clients' requirements.
With the aim of reducing electricity costs and lowering the impact on
electricity markets, a centralised bidding coordination framework has been
proposed in the literature employing a coordinator. In order to improve privacy
and limit the need for the coordinator, we propose a reformulation of the
coordination framework as a decentralised algorithm, employing the Alternating
Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM). However, given the self-interested
nature of the aggregators, they can deviate from the algorithm in order to
reduce their energy costs. Hence, we study the strategic manipulation of the
ADMM algorithm and, in doing so, describe and analyse different possible attack
vectors and propose a mathematical framework to quantify and detect
manipulation. Importantly, this detection framework is not limited the
considered EV scenario and can be applied to general ADMM algorithms. Finally,
we test the proposed decentralised coordination and manipulation detection
algorithms in realistic scenarios using real market and driver data from Spain.
Our empirical results show that the decentralised algorithm's convergence to
the optimal solution can be effectively disrupted by manipulative attacks
achieving convergence to a different non-optimal solution which benefits the
attacker. With respect to the detection algorithm, results indicate that it
achieves very high accuracies and significantly outperforms a naive benchmark
An Experimental Study of Complex-Offer Auctions from Wholesale Energy Markets
A Payment Cost Minimization auction has been proposed as an alternative to the Offer Cost Minimization auction for use in wholesale electric power markets with an intention to lower procurement cost of electricity. Efficiency concerns have been raised for this proposal while assuming that the true production costs would be revealed to the auctioneer in a competitive market. Using an experimental approach, the study compares the performance of these two complex-offer auctions, controlling for the level of unilateral market power. The analysis finds that neither auction results in allocations that correspond to the true cost revelation. Two auctions perform similarly in terms of procurement cost and efficiency. Surprisingly, consumer prices in a competitive environment approach the prices of an environment with market power. It appears that the expected institutional effects for procurement cost and efficiency are greatly dominated by the effects of anti-competitive behavior due to the offer complexity and a cyclical nature of market demand
An Experimental Study of Complex-Offer Auctions from Wholesale Energy Markets
A Payment Cost Minimization auction has been proposed as an alternative to the Offer Cost Minimization auction for use in wholesale electric power markets with an intention to lower procurement cost of electricity. Efficiency concerns have been raised for this proposal while assuming that the true production costs would be revealed to the auctioneer in a competitive market. Using an experimental approach, the study compares the performance of these two complex-offer auctions, controlling for the level of unilateral market power. The analysis finds that neither auction results in allocations that correspond to the true cost revelation. Two auctions perform similarly in terms of procurement cost and efficiency. Surprisingly, consumer prices in a competitive environment approach the prices of an environment with market power. It appears that the expected institutional effects for procurement cost and efficiency are greatly dominated by the effects of anti-competitive behavior due to the offer complexity and a cyclical nature of market demand
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