Characterization of Forward Electricity Market Price Variations and Price-Responsive Demands

This paper addresses two problems of interest in the present time, namely, the characterization of price variations and the corresponding load response to them. The paper begins by defining Price Elasticity Matrices (PEMs) and shows how they can be used to model demands deviation from their scheduled levels due to price differentials. It then explains the reason as to why extending PEMs characterization is necessary. Afterward, we show how Normal distribution lacks accuracy in modeling the variation of market clearing prices from one day to the next. Based on empirical data from the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) area, we propose the use of Stable distribution and demonstrate how such statistical model is very accurate to characterize electricity market price variations. The models mentioned above are used in a Monte Carlo (MC) simulation to find the probability that different Direct Load Control (DLC) levels would not be enough to maintain the peak demand below its reference value. Since MC simulations are so computationally intensive, we also implement Importance Sampling Monte Carlo (ISMC) to substantially reduce the computational burden without sacrificing the accuracy.