Chapter 73 Energy, Reserve and Adjustment Market Behavior With Industry Network, Demand and Generator Parameters

This chapter summarizes results from various experiments that uses a complex 9-node network market with parameters supplied by the electric utility industry. In the experiments conducted, the chapter uses a DC model with quadratic line losses to compute the real power flows in the aggregated network. The chapter concludes that with intensive training and screening, subjects can handle very complex and demanding environments when assisted by local expert system algorithms similar to the support needed by practitioners in the field. Moreover, they engage in extensive, successful manipulation attempts to take advantage of the regulatory must-serve restrictions on the ability of the local distribution monopoly to interrupt demand to discipline seller withholding of supply. Sellers, however, are much more consistently successful in this respect under the CDA trading rule condition. These findings contrast sharply with those of other experimental studies in which modest proportions of peak consumer demand could be interrupted by wholesale buyers, enabling the latter to discipline seller attempts to raise clearing prices.