Integrated retail and wholesale power system operation with smart-grid functionality

Our research team is developing an agent-based test bed for the integrated study of retail and wholesale power markets operating over transmission and distribution networks with smart-grid functionality. This test bed seams together two existing test beds, the AMES Wholesale Power Market Test Bed and the GridLAB-D distribution platform. As a first step, we have designed an integrated retail/wholesale market module specifically based on the ERCOT (Texas) energy region, and we are using simplified versions of this module to study potential retail consumer response to real-time-pricing contracts supported by advanced metering. This study reports on the latter work.