Mechanism Design and Auctions for Electricity Networks.

Summary We present some key aspects of wholesale electricity markets modeling and more specifically focus our attention on auctions and mechanism design. Some of the results arising from those models are the computation of an optimal allocation for the Independent System Operator, the study of the equilibria (existence and unicity in particular) and the design of mechanisms to increase the social surplus. From a more general perspective, this field of research provides clues to discuss how wholesale electricity market should be regulated. We start with a general introduction and then present some results the authors obtained recently. We also briefly expose some undergoing related work. As an illustrative example, a section is devoted to the computation of the Independent System Operator response function for a symmetric binodal setting with piece-wise linear production cost functions.