SMART II : the spot market agent research tool version 2.0.

Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) has worked closely with Western Area Power Administration (Western) over many years to develop a variety of electric power marketing and transmission system models that are being used for ongoing system planning and operation as well as analytic studies. Western markets and delivers reliable, cost-based electric power from 56 power plants to millions of consumers in 15 states. The Spot Market Agent Research Tool Version 2.0 (SMART II) is an investigative system that partially implements some important components of several existing ANL linear programming models, including some used by Western. SMART II does not implement a complete model of the Western utility system but it does include several salient features of this network for exploratory purposes. SMART II uses a Swarm agent-based framework. SMART II agents model bulk electric power transaction dynamics with recognition for marginal costs as well as transmission and generation constraints. SMART II uses a sparse graph of nodes and links to model the electric power spot market. The nodes represent power generators and consumers with distinct marginal decision curves and varying investment capital as well individual learning parameters. The links represent transmission lines with individual capacities taken from a range of central distribution, outlying distribution and feeder line types. The application of SMART II to electric power systems studies has produced useful results different from those often found using more traditional techniques. Use of the advanced features offered by the Swarm modeling environment simplified the creation of the SMART II model