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Abstract Prosumers adopt distributed energy resources (DER) to cover part of their own consumption and to sell surplus energy. Although individual prosumers are too dispersed to exert operational market power, they may collectively hold a strategic advantage over conventional generation in selecting DER capacity via aggregators. We devise a bilevel model to examine DER capacity sizing by a collective prosumer as a Stackelberg leader in an electricity industry where conventional generation may exert market power in operations. At the upper level, the prosumer chooses DER capacity in anticipation of lower-level operations by conventional generation and DER output. We demonstrate that exertion of market power in operations by conventional generation and the marginal cost of conventional generation affect DER investment by the prosumer in a nonmonotonic manner. Intuitively, in an industry where conventional generation exerts market power in operations similar to a monopoly (MO), the prosumer invests in more DER capacity than under perfectly competitive operations (PC) to take advantage of a high market-clearing price. However, if the marginal cost of conventional generation is high enough, then this intuitive result is reversed as the prosumer adopts more DER capacity under PC than under MO. This is because the high marginal cost of conventional generation prevents the market-clearing price from decreasing, thereby allowing for higher prosumer revenues. Moreover, competition relieves the chokehold on consumption under MO, which further incentivises the prosumer to expand DER capacity to capture market share. We prove the existence of a critical threshold for the marginal cost of conventional generation that leads to this counterintuitive result. Finally, we propose a countervailing regulatory mechanism that yields welfare-enhancing DER investment even in deregulated electricity industries.
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Risk-averse and strategic prosumers: A distributionally robust chance-constrained MPEC approach
Under the ruling of FERC Order 2222, prosumers who own distributed energy resources are expected to play an essential role that can significantly affect the market outcomes. This paper assesses the market power potential of a risk-averse prosumer by designating it as a Stackelberg leader in the market. We formulate the problem as a mathematical program with equilibrium constraints with a distributionally robust chance-constrained framework to account for the renewable generation uncertainty. The numerical results demonstrate that the prosumer’s strategy depends on the magnitude of renewable generation uncertainty and the degree of risk aversion, which jointly affect the perceived quantity of its renewable resources. The risk-averse Stackelberg case always yields a higher payoff for the prosumer compared to the Cournot and perfect competition cases. Moreover, it is more potent for the prosumer to exercise buyer’s market power rather than seller’s market power. The situation worsens when the prosumer is less risk averse. This highlights the importance of understanding the role of the prosumer acting either as a consumer or as a producer and the risk faced by the prosumer when evaluating its interaction with the wholesale market.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1832683
- PAR ID:
- 10409980
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Energy Systems
- ISSN:
- 1868-3967
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1007/s12667-022-00561-0
