ADVANTAGES OF THE LINKED SWING‐CONTRACT MARKET DESIGN

The Linked Swing‐Contract Market Design has the same basic purpose as current US RTO/ISO‐managed wholesale power markets: namely, to ensure efficient continual balancing of net load in real‐time operations. This chapter reviews the three basic approaches to long‐term reserve procurement currently implemented in US RTO/ISO‐managed wholesale power markets: namely, scarcity pricing, centrally managed capacity markets, and load‐serving entity (LSE) bilateral contract obligations. It explains how SC markets could facilitate the resolution of the revenue insufficiency and merit‐order issues causing problems in current US RTO/ISO‐managed wholesale power markets. A rough comparison between the size of the contract‐clearing optimization for an SC day‐ahead market (DAM) and the size of a standard security‐constrained unit commitment (SCUC) optimization for a US RTO/ISO‐managed DAM is provided. Finally, the chapter briefly reviews additional desirable features of the Linked Swing‐Contract Market Design.