User-Aware Electricity Price Optimization for the Competitive Market

Demand response mechanisms and load control in the electricity market represent an important area of research at the international level: the trend towards competition and market liberalization has led to the development of methodologies and tools to support energy providers. Demand side management helps energy suppliers to reduce the peak demand and remodel load profiles. This work is intended to support energy suppliers and policy makers in developing strategies to act on the behavior of energy consumers, with the aim to make a more efficient use of energy. We develop a non-linear optimization model for the dynamics of the electricity market, which can be used to obtain tariff recommendations or for setting the goals of a sensibilization campaign. The model comes in two variants: a stochastic version, designed for residential electricity consumption, and a deterministic version, suitable for large electricity users (e.g., public buildings, industrial users). We have tested our model on data from the Italian energy market and performed an extensive analysis of different scenarios. We also tested the optimization model in a real setting in the context of the FP7 DAREED project (http://www.dareed.eu/), where the model has been employed to provide tariff recommendations or to help the identification of goals for local policies