Basic analysis of the pricing processes in modeled electricity markets with multi-agent simulation

Many electric utilities world-wide have been forced to change their ways of doing business, from vertically integrated systems to open market ones. In Japan, we are facing urgent issues about how to design the structures of power market. In order to cope with the issue, many studies have been made with market models. However, there are many kinds of modeling methods, and no particular method has been established so far. Each has drawbacks and advantages about validity and versatility. This paper presents the method to use a multi-agent model, which learns a bidding strategy autonomously through trial-and-error search action, as useful tools of numerical analysis of the price formation process of an electric power market. The model enables us to analyze more general electricity markets, which have several different types of power plants with unit commitment costs, seasonal and hourly demand fluctuation, real-time regulation market and operating reserve market. This model figures out the issues that may be appeared when we will design markets and the way of designing operating reserve market.