Bi-level bidding and multi-energy retail packages for integrated energy service providers considering multi-energy demand elasticity

How to effectively use the multi-energy demand elasticity of users to bid in the multi-energy market and formulate multi-energy retail packages is an urgent problem need to be solved by integrated energy service providers (IESPs) to attract more users and reduce operating costs. This paper presents a unified clearing of electricity and natural gas based bi-level bidding and multi-energy retail price formulation method for IESPs considering multi-energy demand elasticity. First, we propose an operating structure of IESPs in the wholesale and retail energy markets. The multi-energy demand elasticity model of retail-side users and retail price model of electricity, gas, heat and cooling are established. Secondly, a bi-level bidding model for IESPs considering multi-energy demand elasticity is established to provide IESPs with wholesale-side bidding decisions and retail-side energy retail price decisions. Finally, an example is given to verify the proposed method. The results show that the method improves the total social welfare of the electricity and natural gas market by 7.99% and the profit of IESPs by 1.40%. It can reduce the variance of the electricity, gas, and cooling load curves, especially the reduction of the variance of electricity load curve can reach 79.90%. It can be seen that the research in this paper has a positive effect on repairing the limitations of integrated energy trading research and improving the economics of operation of IESPs.