Impacts of Ramp Rate Limits on Oligopolistic Opportunities in Electricity Markets

In this paper, a supply function equilibrium (SFE) model is used to study the impacts of ramp rate limits on generating firms' opportunities in oligopolistic electricity markets. Ramp rate limits are added to the SFE model. Ramp rate limits couple the SFE models of different hours. A heuristic algorithm is presented to solve the coupled SFE models. Existence and uniqueness of solutions are discussed. By applying the presented algorithm to a test system, the impacts of ramp rate limits on the strategic behavior of generating firms are studied.