The use of electricity in 21st century living has been firmly established throughout most of the world, correspondingly the infrastructure for production and delivery of electricity to consumers has matured and stabilised. However, due to recent technical and environmental–political developments, the electricity infrastructure worldwide is undergoing major restructuring. The forces driving this reorganisation are a complex interplay of technical, environmental, economic and political factors. The general trend of the reorganisation is a dis–aggregation of the previously integrated functions of generation, transmission and distribution, together with the establishment of competitive markets, primarily in generation, to replace previous regulated monopolistic utilities. To ensure reliable and cost effective electricity supply to consumers it is necessary to have an accurate picture of the expected generation in terms of the spatial and temporal distribution of prices and volumes. Previously this information was obtained by the regulated utility using technical studies such as centrally planned unit–commitment and economic–dispatch. However, in the new deregulated market environment such studies have diminished applicability and limited accuracy since generation assets are generally autonomous and subject to market forces. With generation outcomes governed by market mechanisms, to have an accurate picture of expected generation in the new electricity supply industry, it is necessary to complement traditional studies with new studies of market equilibrium and stability. Models and solution methods have been developed and refined for many markets, however they cannot be directly applied to the generation market due to the unique nature of electricity, having high inelastic demand, low storage capability and distinct transportation requirements. Intensive effort is underway to formulate solutions and models that specifically reflect the unique characteristics of the generation market. Various models have been proposed including game theory, stochastic and agent–based systems. Similarly there is a diverse range of solution methods including, Monte–Carlo simulations, linear–complimentary and quadratic programming. These approaches have varying degrees of generality, robustness and accuracy, some being better in certain aspects but weaker in others. This thesis formulates a new general model for the generation market based on the Cournot game, it makes no conjectures about producers’ behaviour and assumes that all electricity produced is immediately consumed. The new formulation characterises producers purely by their cost curves, which is only required to be piece–wise differentiable, and allows consumers’ characteristics to remain unspecified. The formulation can determine dynamic equilibrium and multiple equilibria of markets with single and multiple consumers and producers. Additionally stability concepts for the new market equilibrium is also developed to provide discrimination for dynamic equilibrium and to enable the structural stability of the market to be assessed. Solutions of the new formulation are evaluated by the use of evolutionary computation, which is a guided stochastic search paradigm that mimics the operation of biological evolution to iteratively produce a population of solutions. Evolutionary computation is employed as it is adept at finding multiple solutions for underconstrained systems, such as that of the new market formulation. Various enhancements to significantly improve the performance of the algorithms and simplify its application are developed. The concept of convergence potential of a population is introduced together with a system for the controlled extraction of such potential to accelerate the algorithm’s convergence and improve its accuracy and robustness. A new constraint handling technique for linear constraints that preserves the solution’s diversity is also presented together with a coevolutionary solution method for the multiple consumers and producers market. To illustrate the new electricity market formulation and its evolutionary computation solution methods, the equilibrium and stability of a test market with one consumer and thirteen thermal generators with valve point losses is examined. The case of a multiple consumer market is not simulated, though the formulation and solution methods for this case is included. The market solutions obtained not only confirms previous findings thus validating the new approach, but also includes new results yet to be verified by future studies. Techniques for market designers, regulators and other system planners in utilising the new market solutions are also given. In summary, the market formulation and solution method developed shows great promise in determining expected generation in a deregulated environment.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/220968 |
| Date | January 2002 |
| Creators | Nguyen, Duy Huu Manh |
| Publisher | University of Western Australia. School of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Copyright Duy Huu Manh Nguyen, http://www.itpo.uwa.edu.au/UWA-Computer-And-Software-Use-Regulations.html |
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