Designing markets for congestion management on distribution grids

In an electricity market, controllable loads allow users to react to price signals. If the share of renewable electricity generation increases, the electricity price may not correlate with available network capacity. In such a scenario, the electricity price must be supplemented with a signal that indicates the availability of network capacity. This is especially problematic on a distribution grid, where the grid topology and limited flexibility of load impede direct application of methods used on the transmission grid. We therefore investigate the performance of distribution grid congestion management mechanisms, paying specific attention to the presence of multiple EV aggregators. We define the problem of charging electric vehicles in terms of a job scheduling problem to explicitly account for the (inter-)temporal constraints that distinguish such a problem. We describe our auction in terms of empirically evaluate market designs for optimistic valuation by aggregators, showing that forward market performs adequately, while real-time markets are often infeasible. For a more refined analysis, future work aims to include uncertainty in both the arrival of EVs and the environment.