SCENARIO MODELLING OF AUSTRALIA’S NATIONAL ELECTRICITY MARKET USING NEMSIM

This work presents a scenario-based approach for modelling Australia’s National Electricity Market (NEM) using the agent-based simulator NEMSIM (Grozev et al., 2005), which is being developed by CSIRO’s Energy Transformed Flagship project. NEMSIM models the major coal, gas, hydro and wind energy sectors and accounts for greenhouse gas emissions due to electricity generation (Batten and Grozev, 2006). Modelling electricity markets is challenging because of the intricate interactions and interdependencies between market participants, physical infrastructure and government regulations. Traditional electrical simulation models could not be used for the deregulated electricity market since the new driving force for operational design is market behaviour, which was absent in previous, centrally planned, electricity systems. A review and a classification of electricity generation market models is presented by Ventosa et al. (2005). Our focus in using NEMSIM for scenario development is on agent-based modelling (ABM) and simulation. The ABM methodology is establishing itself as a mature research area of complex adaptive systems (Samuelson and Macal, 2006). This framework allows simulation of decision making and market behaviour of compan