Towards a Conceptual Framework for Agent-based Electricity Markets

Electricity markets (EMs) are essentially systems for affecting the purchase and sale of energy using supply and demand to set the prices. Most existing EMs were designed without the notion that a significant part of the traded power could come from renewable energy sources and may require modifications to continue functioning effectively. Agent-based simulation tools are powerful computational tools to address key market issues. This article claims that the development of a conceptual framework to define the key features that are needed to model and simulate EMs using software agents can help to understand the interrelationships of disparate research efforts and facilitate the development and test of future market models and designs. Accordingly, it describes two groups of dimensions of a conceptual framework for agent-based electricity markets, labeled "market architecture" and "market structure".