Energy Market Optimization

The Challenge

Energy transition and electricity market transformations

Electricity markets have been used for decades as an efficient way to exchange energy, to match supply and demand while optimizing the social welfare and securing the grid constraints. Nevertheless, these markets also have to face the major changes transforming the energy landscape: the development of decentralized units based on renewables which creates variability and uncertainty, the increase of the grid usage… All these well-known transformations make, as a consequence, the supply-demand balance, the congestion risk or even adequacy becoming real challenges.

Developing the energy markets of the future will be a key factor to overcome these new challenges and to integrate the increasing complexity of the electricity systems. It provides an elegant and more optimum alternative to grid and assets investments. However, including this complexity into the markets is not straightforward: keep the market efficient, scalable and transparent while having a growing number of actors; representing more accurately the grid constraints; considering local needs while keeping the market liquid, etc.

The Solution

The leading Market Clearing algorithms for energy exchanges.

N-SIDE has been a key provider of market clearing solutions for years. The N-SIDE market clearing tool is a powerful algorithm matching supply and demand while optimizing social welfare in an efficient and scalable way. The modularity of the tool ensures its wide range of application thanks to: flexible network modeling, from local grids to transmission grids; numerous types of market products enabling the market participant to express their own constraints in a flexible way; various pricing schemes (managing non-convexities); usable for various use cases (capacity, energy, voltage…) in many configurations (timing, geographical extension, TSO-DSO coordination…).

N-SIDE, as a key actor in the Energy market and expert in advanced analytics, offers its market clearing tool to contribute to a better integration of electricity markets (Day-ahead, Intraday, Balancing, Reserve) at different dimensions:

National market clearing – The algorithm clears efficiently a multi-zonal national market, including various types of orders and maximizing the social welfare achieved by each market session.
Cross-border coupling – By the coupling of national markets at the European level. EUPHEMIA, developed by N-SIDE, is the official coupling algorithm for the European day-ahead markets, determining the spot prices and volumes for 25 countries.
TSO-DSO Coordination – By the optimization of energy and ancillary service markets at the global and local levels. N-SIDE algorithms leverage the flexibilities of DERs (Distributed Energy Resources) and allows an optimal coordination between TSOs and DSOs.

In order to develop such algorithms taking into account all market constraints,
N-SIDE is using different types of advanced analytics:

Prescriptive analytics

Develop cutting-edge optimization algorithms to solve large-scale (multi-countries), non-linear (complex network representation, complex market rules), non-Convex (complex market products) problems in a limited amount of time.

Predictive analytics

Forecast ancillary services needs for different timeframes and the associated bidding strategy.

Descriptive analytics

Represent in an accurate and tractable way the different grid constraints at the cross-border, transmission and distribution levels.

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Network model

Represent different grid constraints in a accurate and tractable way: ATC, Flow-based, Non-linear convex models (SOCP, SDP)

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Auction management

Define different bidding approach: explicit or implicit bidding (price based control)

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Market product model

Model different types of market products: hourly curves, block orders, exclusive orders, complex orders, etc

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Price determination

Develop different price determination mechanisms: pay as clear, pays as bid, non-uniform pricing, etc

The Results

Smarter electricity market for a competitive Energy Transition!

Optimize price setting and bid acceptance at maximum social welfare value

Optimize procurement and activation of ancillary services at minimal cost

Optimize allocation of cross-border scheduled exchanges

Optimize coordination between TSO and DSO grid operations

M€ average daily value of matched trades

EU countries computing Day-Ahead electricity prices with Euphemia

minutes to solve European-wide market coupling problems

of successful runs of our day-ahead market-clearing algorithm

Interested to know more ?

— They trust us —

I value very much the current Euphemia team at N-SIDE: professional, precise, very responsive and working with a positive attitude. Please continue!

Caroline Gras – Head of Algorithm Management at EPEXSPOT

— They trust us —

N-SIDE is proving a key partner within the SmartNet project thanks to a thorough experience in the modelling of real time electricity markets. This is a critical topic in the project: the dimension of the mathematical model is significant. So, the performance of the simulation platform will also depend significantly on the numerical treatment of the equations. Also on that, I know that with N-SIDE we are in very good hands.

GianLuigi Migliavacca –SmartNet Project Coordinator

— They trust us —

N-SIDE combines a continuous drive for the highest quality possible, with a hands-on pragmatic attitude where needed in the field of energy market optimization. Within the SmartNet project, N-SIDE plays an important role in the development of a market simulation environment for innovative system services.

Daan Six, EnergyVille Research Domain Leader Energy Markets