NEMSIM: Finding Ways to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions using Multi-Agent Electricity Modelling

For more than a decade, electricity industries have been undergoing regulatory reform worldwide, with the general aim of improving economic efficiency. In many places, these changes have culminated in the appearance of a wholesale power market. There are various, sometimes contradictory, conclusions about the performance of such restructured electricity markets. In this new context, the operation of the generating units no longer depends on centralized state or utility-based procedures, but rather on the decentralized decisions of various firms – profit-maximizers in different states of economic health with different long-term plans. Market performance depends largely on how each market participant responds to market design – including the rules, market observations, operational procedures and information revelation.