Optimal electricity procurement for load service entity incorporating with reserve and risks

The operation experiences of present power markets and the existing researches have proved: effective demand competition is essential to lessen generator market power, improve the system reliability and the utilization efficiency of power sources. In most power markets, load service entities (LSEs) act as the agent of consumers to participate in demand competition. It is the duty of LSEs for purchase electricity on their consumers' behalf by actively taking part in the competition of long-term contract markets, spot markets, even reserve markets when having reserve obligations. So how to conduct such electricity procurement and planning activities is becoming a challenging problem. This paper researches LSEs' electric energy purchase problem, according to the modern investment theory, propose an optimal model of both purchase cost and risk minimum considering the affects of volatilities of spot prices and risk tolerance on purchase planning. Monte Carlo simulation algorithm is developed to solve the objective model. The historical data of California power market is used to test the presented approach. Three typical points: on-peak, shoulder load and off-peak, are utilized to analyze the influences of different risk coefficients, with reserve and without reserve demand. The results prove that the proposed approach is effective and could be extended for further electric resource planning considering long run electric energy contract and demand side management.