Modeling Gas-Electricity Coordination in a Competitive Market

As climate concerns, low natural gas prices, and renewable technologies increase the electric power sector’s dependence on natural gas-fired power plants, operational and investment models for gas and electric power systems will need to treat the interdependencies between these two systems to accurately capture the impacts of one on the other. Currently, few hybrid gas-electricity models exist. This paper reviews the use of computational models in electric power systems, the state of the art for gas-electricity models, and presents a new model and case study that illustrates a few effects of simultaneously considering the gas (purchases and capacity contracting) and electricity (power plants operation) system in a competitive market under uncertainty from renewable energy sources.