PhD defence: Electricity market design underuncertainty Supporting the Integration of Large-Scale Renewable Energy Sources
The electricity sector is undergoing a significant transformation due to the large-scale integration of variable renewable energy sources (VRES) and increased demand-side electrification. These changes lead to inefficiencies in current electricity markets, originally designed for dispatchable power plants and inelastic demand. This research begins by identifying the increasing uncertainty in supply and demand as a key challenge and categorizing a range of market design modifications already proposed in the literature, including several uncertainty-based market clearing mechanisms. With a focus on short-term operations in European markets, some of these mechanisms, including robust and stochastic optimization techniques, are then compared to one another and with the current deterministic market clearing. To overcome limitations in the existing methods, the thesis introduces a novel light robust (LR) optimization-based approach. This approach can integrate VRES uncertainty into the short-term market clearing while minimizing negative impacts on social welfare. To further enhance efficiency, a co-optimization framework for LR day-ahead energy markets and reserve procurement is formulated, and analyzed under alternative reserve requirement — fixed, variable, and hybrid. Finally, the thesis studies the strategic behavior of VRES producers in LR markets, investigating whether they are incentivized to reveal their true uncertainty ranges or act strategically to maximize profits. The results show that under single pricing imbalance settlement, the player has incentives to deviate from its true uncertainty range if the system is expected to have predominantly positive imbalances. These incentives are, generally, mitigated under dual imbalance pricing.
- Start date and time
- End date and time
- Location
- Academiegebouw, Domplein 29 & online (livestream link)
- PhD candidate
- L.M. Silva Rodriguez
- Dissertation
- Electricity market design underuncertainty Supporting the Integration of Large-Scale Renewable Energy Sources
- PhD supervisor(s)
- prof. dr. M. Gibescu
- Co-supervisor(s)
- dr. E.M. Fumagalli
- dr. A. Sanjab