Multi-period near-equilibrium in a pool-based electricity market including on/off decisions

Based on the well-known concept of single-period equilibrium in an electricity market, this paper defines, analyzes and illustrates the concept of a multi-period equilibrium. Within this equilibrium framework and a multi-period horizon, market participants simultaneously optimize their respective individual and conflicting objectives. Constraints involving prices can be incorporated into the problems of the market participants. To avoid the limitations imposed by the necessary use of binary variables to model on/off decisions, the conditions to attain a multi-period equilibrium are formulated through Benders decomposition, which allows for efficiently solving the resulting equilibrium problem. The proposed procedure is illustrated using a realistic case study based on the IEEE Reliability Test System.