Trading Agents in the Smart Electricity Grid

Trading Agents in the Smart Electricity Grid

Perukrishnen Vytelingum, Sarvapali D. Ramchurn, Thomas D. Voice, Alex Rogers and Nicholas R. Jennings

University of Southampton

iDEaS : Intelligent Decentralised Energy-Aware Systems 2

Background: The Wholesale Electricity Market

• Two-stage mechanism typical in the wholesale electricity market:– Day-ahead mechanism– Real-time balancing mechanism


Background

• The popular electricity market mechanisms are:– The LMP (Locational Marginal Pricing) mechanism (e.g. in different areas in US)– The pool-based mechanism (e.g. the National Grid in the UK and the Nord Pool in

Scandinavian countries)

• We focus on the former where pricing is based on nodal location within the grid.

• A supplier buys electricity in the wholesale market for its consumers.• Generators sell electricity in the wholesale market.• Transmission lines with a capacity• The suppliers submit their demands, generators their supply. Thereon,

the system operator computes the optimal allocation (that maximises the system utility subject to physical constraints of the lines).


Motivation

• Because the LMP mechanism assumes truthful behaviour of traders, the system can be gamed.

• The most effective way to deal with this shortcoming is regulation of the traders.

• With more and more generators in a future of micro-generation, regulation of every generator becomes less feasible.

• A mechanism that does not make such an assumption (of truthful behaviour) would be robust against gaming and would not require regulation.


Objective

• We first model the smart grid (at a micro-level) as a multi-agent system with selfish, profit-motivated traders and a system operator.

• Given these different players, we need to develop a novel market mechanism for the wholesale electricity market (at the day-ahead and real-time stage) that does not assume truthful behaviours of agents.

• Our mechanism should work both at a day-ahead and real-time level.

• Finally, we need to benchmark our mechanism with the current LMP mechanism as providing an optimal (assuming complete and perfect information from traders).

iDEaS : Intelligent Decentralised Energy-Aware Systems

The Novel Electricity Market Mechanism

• Based on the Continuous Double Auction. Similar format as in financial markets like NASDAQ.

• Combines the economics of markets and the physics of electricity transmission networks.

• Consists of three main parts:– The trading mechanism (day-ahead)– The security mechanism– The online balancing mechanism (real-time)

• Agents can use the Zero-Intelligence strategy or the novel AA-EM strategy (designed for our market mechanism) to trade in the market.


The Trading Mechanism

• Multiple buyers and sellers are allowed to compete and submit orders at any times.

• Bids and asks are queued in bid and ask orderbooks.

• Defined by the trader id, quantity they require, maximum price the buyer is will the pay and minimum price the seller is willing to take and the node position in the grid.



• Market mechanism is defined by its set of protocols:– The quote-accepting policy– The clearing policy– The pricing policy


The Security Mechanism

• Ensures the system is secure at all times by moderating the total demand and supply at each node of the electricity grid.

• The volume of each additional trade (i.e. a match between a bid and an ask) is moderated for system security, i.e. none of the transmission line overloads.– We use DC approximation flows to calculate the resulting flows from a

potential trade and ensure they do not exceed line capacity.


Pricing of Transmission Lines

• Information about the transmission lines in made public:– transmission cost (per unit) for each transmission line. – Current through each line (given all the trades in the

grid).– The capacity of the line

• Given the flows through the grid, we can price the cost of transmission for each potential trade.

• Furthermore, given the flow from a potential trade of +1, we can calculate the buyer’s and seller’s price for a quantity of +1. We term this value the DLMP for buyers and sellers.




Continuous Clearing




bid

ask

Transmission cost for trade

Buyer’s transaction price

Seller’s transaction price


The Online Balancing Mechanism

• Real-time balancing of demand and supply using offers from the bid and ask orderbooks:– Buyers bought less than needed have to cover their short position by

buying from the ask orderbooks.– Buyers that bought more than required have to cover their long

position by selling the extra power.– Sellers that sold more than they can produce need to buy that power

from other sellers to cover their short position.

• By having to cover a long or short position, traders end up with poorer prices at the balancing-phase where the low bids and high asks remain.

• Incentivised to accurately predict demand and supply.


Empirical Evaluation

• Within 92% to 99% of optimal (where optimal assumes complete and perfect information)

• Evaluated for different topologies• Optimal LMP breaks down with malicious agents


Empirical Evaluation

• Increased efficiency with learning transmission lines.• The emergent effect of the learning behaviours is a less

congested grid and more efficient allocation.


Conclusion

• We designed a novel trading mechanism that combines the economics of financial markets and the physics of the electricity grid.

• Buyers and sellers can trade electricity in a day-ahead and a real-time market subject to transmission line constraints.

• We empirically demonstrate a high efficiency without having to assume that agents are truthful, risking gaming in the grid.

• We show that with a learning mechanism, the system operator can adapt the transmission line charges for congestion control in the system and improve system efficiency.

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Trading Agents in the Smart Electricity Grid

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