Simulating Arbitrage Optimization for Market Monitoring in Gas and Electricity Transmission Networks
For market administrators, this work provides a framework to identify cross-market manipulation, though it is limited to small test networks and incremental in approach.
The paper examines how gas-fired generators can exploit market power across coupled gas and electricity networks, developing optimization-based methods to detect such manipulation. It demonstrates scenarios in small test networks where gas market bids alter power market outcomes.
We examine market outcomes in energy transport networks with a focus on gas-fired generators, which are producers in a wholesale electricity market and consumers in the natural gas market. Market administrators monitor bids to determine whether a participant wields market power to manipulate the price of energy, reserves, or financial transmission rights. If economic or physical withholding of generation from the market is detected, mitigation is imposed by replacing excessive bids with reference level bids to prevent artificial supply shortages. We review market monitoring processes in the power grid, and present scenarios in small interpretable test networks to show how gas-fired generators can bid in the gas market to alter outcomes in a power market. We develop a framework based on DC optimal power flow (OPF) and steady-state optimal gas flow (OGF) formulations to represent two interacting markets with structured exchange of price and quantity bids. We formulate optimization-based methods to identify market power in a power grid, as well as to identify market conditions that indicate market power being exerted by a generator using gas market bids.