Optimisation for Coalitions Formation Considering the Fairness in Flexibility Market Participation
This paper proposes a coalitional game-theoretical model for consumers' flexibility coalition formation, supported by an optimization model based on differential evolution. Traditionally, the participation in conventional electricity markets used to be limited to large producers and consumers. The final end-users contract their energy supply with retailers, since due to the smaller quantity available for trading, they cannot participate in electricity market transactions. Nowadays, the growing concept of local electricity market brings many advantages to the end-users. The flexibility negotiation considering local areas is an important procedure for network operators and it is incorporating a local electricity market opportunity. A coalition formation model to facilitate small players participation in the flexibility market proposed by the network operator is addressed in this work. The inclusion of Shapley value in the proposed model enables finding the best coalition structures considering the fairness of the coalitions in addition to the potential income achieved by the consumers when selling their flexibility. An optimization model based on differential evolution is also proposed as the way to find the optimal coalition structures based on the multi-criteria specifications. ; This work has received funding from FEDER Funds through COMPETE program and from National Funds through (FCT) under the projects CEECIND/01811/2017 and UIDB/00760/2020, from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under project DOMINOES (grant agreement No 771066), and Ricardo Faia is supported by national funds through Fundacão para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) with PhD grant reference SFRH/BD/133086/2017. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion