Creating a pricing mechanism for real-time balancing in sustainable electricity markets

This thesis considers the problem of designing a mechanism that efficiently regulates imbalances on the energy grid. Brokers aggregate supply and demand on the energy market by buying and selling power ahead of time. Mispredictions create discrepancies between supply and demand and need to be resolved. With the increasing usage of sustainable but often less predictable energy sources it is important that these imbalances are solved efficiently. Brokers can engage in load curtailment to create efficient ways of solving imbalances. In this thesis we design market-based mechanisms that make use of these capabilities. We define the desirable properties that a balancing mechanism should have and present several mechanisms that satisfy these. We also show that if brokers can actively participate themselves in the regulation it is impossible to create an efficient mechanism with all the desired properties as the problem becomes equivalent to a multi-unit double auction. Finally we identify an open problem in auction theory and propose a 2-item multi-unit auction.AlgoritmicsElectrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Scienc