Electricity Markets
Graduate-level treatment of organized day-ahead and real-time electricity markets, centered on locational marginal pricing. Using ERCOT as the principal example, the course develops the power-flow, optimization, economic-dispatch, market-design, transmission-pricing, unit-commitment, and risk-hedging concepts needed to understand centralized electricity markets.
Objectives
- Explain the history, institutions, and design of organized electricity markets, with emphasis on ERCOT and locational marginal pricing.
- Solve nonlinear simultaneous equations and formulate AC, linearized, and DC power-flow models used in market analysis.
- Formulate optimization problems and apply optimality, duality, and sensitivity concepts to electric-power applications.
- Formulate economic dispatch and interpret generator costs, constraints, marginal costs, and system lambda.
- Use microeconomic concepts such as supply, demand, market clearing, surplus, and incentives in electricity-market settings.
- Explain how an independent system operator clears offer-based energy and ancillary-service markets and determines prices.
- Derive and interpret locational marginal prices under transmission constraints, contingencies, reactive-power requirements, and losses.
- Formulate ramp-constrained dispatch and unit commitment, and explain duality gaps, make-whole payments, and commitment-supporting prices.
- Relate day-ahead and real-time market outcomes and assess their implications for operations and investment.
- Explain energy and transmission price-risk hedging using forward contracts, contracts for differences, and financial transmission rights.
Modules
Description: This module previews the course sequence from simultaneous equations and power flow through optimization, economic dispatch, microeconomics, offer-based markets, and locational marginal pricing.
Description: This module traces electricity-market restructuring in Texas, including ERCOT, regulatory jurisdiction, the transition from vertically integrated utilities to the nodal market, and capacity-adequacy concerns.
Description: This module formulates systems of linear and nonlinear equations and develops Newton-Raphson solution methods using Taylor approximations and the Jacobian matrix as preparation for power-flow analysis.
Description: This module reviews real and reactive power, phasors, per-unit quantities, balanced three-phase circuits, transmission-line models, the bus-admittance matrix, and the formulation of AC power-flow equations.
Description: This module examines power-flow solution characteristics and develops linearized and DC power-flow models, line-flow constraints, shift factors, and worked network examples used in market calculations.
Description: This module introduces decision variables, objectives, feasible sets, constrained and unconstrained problems, local and global minimizers, convex sets, and convex functions.
Description: This module develops Lagrangians, dual functions and dual problems, then applies optimality and sensitivity concepts to unconstrained and equality-constrained optimization.
Description: This module covers linear and nonlinear inequality-constrained optimization, integer and mixed-integer formulations, nonconvex feasible sets, and the economic interpretation of duality gaps.
Description: This module formulates generator economic dispatch with capacity limits and production costs, derives optimality conditions and marginal costs, and introduces linear-programming approximations.
Description: This module develops demand and supply functions, market-clearing prices, economic surplus, operating costs, inelastic demand, and the distinction between spot and forward markets.
Description: This module compares central planning with market-based decisions for investment and operations, emphasizing surplus maximization, competition, bilateral contracting, and auctions in the electricity industry.
Description: This module introduces offer-based economic dispatch, economic surplus, feasible production, the need for centralized coordination, generator offers, demand bids, and the independent system operator's dispatch problem.
Description: This module develops the market pricing rule and examines price-taking behavior, profit maximization, marginal-cost offers, infra-marginal revenues, incentives, and investment decisions.
Description: This module extends energy dispatch to ancillary services, including reserve-constrained dispatch, co-optimization of energy and reserves, generator incentives, and reserve pricing.
Description: This module generalizes offer-based dispatch to linear and nonlinear system constraints and multiple commodities, then examines pricing theorems, uplift, hard and soft constraints, and adequacy reserves.
Description: This module formulates optimal power flow and DC optimal power flow, incorporates transmission constraints into offer-based dispatch, and develops the corresponding nodal pricing and sensitivity interpretations.
Description: This module develops angle-eliminated optimal-power-flow formulations and network examples, then interprets LMP properties, congestion rent, congestion cost, and the economic effects of constrained transmission.
Description: This module extends locational pricing to contingency constraints, pre- and post-contingency flows, reactive-power prices, loss prices, power balance, and iterative decomposition or linearization methods.
Description: This module introduces temporal market issues, demand variation, ramp-constrained economic dispatch, intertemporal offers and prices, and the formulation of the unit-commitment problem.
Description: This module applies Lagrangian relaxation and duality to unit commitment and explains duality gaps, the absence of dispatch-supporting prices, and make-whole payments.
Description: This module examines mixed-integer unit commitment, alternative make-whole and commitment-supporting prices, price anonymity, investment implications, transmission constraints, and consistency between day-ahead and real-time markets.
Description: This module explains LMP volatility and risk hedging through forward markets, contracts for differences, bilateral contracts, transmission prices, financial transmission rights, congestion-revenue rights, and revenue adequacy.