Pricing schemes in electric energy markets

Two thirds of the U.S. power systems are operated under market structures. A good market design should maximize social welfare and give market participants proper incentives to follow market solutions. Pricing schemes play very important roles in market design.

Locational marginal pricing scheme is the core pricing scheme in energy markets. Locational marginal prices are good pricing signals for dispatch marginal costs. However, the locational marginal prices alone are not incentive compatible since energy markets are non-convex markets. Locational marginal prices capture dispatch costs but fail to capture commitment costs such as startup cost, no-load cost, and shutdown cost. As a result, uplift payments are paid to generators in markets in order to provide incentives for generators to follow market solutions. The uplift payments distort pricing signals.

In this thesis, pricing schemes in electric energy markets are studied. In the first part, convex hull pricing scheme is studied and the pricing model is extended with network constraints. The subgradient algorithm is applied to solve the pricing model. In the second part, a stochastic dispatchable pricing model is proposed to better address the non-convexity and uncertainty issues in day-ahead energy markets. In the third part, an energy storage arbitrage model with the current locational marginal price scheme is studied. Numerical test cases are studied to show the arguments in this thesis.

The overall market and pricing scheme design is a very complex problem. This thesis gives a thorough overview of pricing schemes in day-ahead energy markets and addressed several key issues in the markets. New pricing schemes are proposed to improve market efficiency.