Demand response with capacity constrained supply function bidding

Abstract

We study the problem faced by an operator who aims to allocate a certain amount of load adjustment (either load reduction or increment) to multiple consumers so as to minimize the aggregate consumer disutility. We propose and analyze a simple uniform-price market mechanism where every consumer submits a single bid to choose a supply function from a group of parameterized ones. These parameterized supply functions are designed to ensure that every consumer's load adjustment is within an exogenous capacity limit that is determined by the current power system operating condition. We show that the proposed mechanism yields bounded efficiency loss at a Nash equilibrium. In particular, the proposed mechanism is shown to achieve approximate social optimality at a Nash equilibrium, if the total capacity of all consumers (excluding the consumer with the largest capacity) is much larger than the total amount of load to be adjusted. We complement our analysis through numerical case studies.

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