Alternative Models to Analyze Market Power and Financial Transmission Rights in Electricity Markets

One of the main concerns with the introduction of competition in the power sector is the strategic behaviour of market participants. Computable models of strategic behaviour are becoming increasingly important to understand the complexities of competition. Such models can help analyze market designs and regulatory policies. In this thesis, further developments on the modelling and analysis of strategic behaviour in electricity markets are presented. This thesis work has been conducted along three research lines. In the first research line, an oligopolistic model of a joint energy and spinning reserve market is formulated to analyze imperfect competition. Strategic behaviour is introduced by means of conjectured functions. With this integrated formulation for imperfect competition, the opportunity cost between generation and spinning reserve has been analytically derived. Besides, inter-temporal and energy constraints, and financial transmission rights are taken into account. Under such considerations, competition in electricity markets is modelled with more realism. The oligopolistic model is formulated as an equilibrium problem in terms of complementarity conditions. In the second research line, a methodology to screen and mitigate the potential exacerbation of market power due to the ownership of financial transmission rights is presented. Hedging position ratios are computed to quantify the hedging level of financial transmission rights. They are based on the actual impact that each participant has in the energy market, and on the potential impact that it would have with the ownership of financial transmission rights. Thus, hedging position ratios are used to identify the potential gambling positions from the transmission rights bidders, and, therefore, used to prioritize critical positions in the auction for transmission rights. In the last research line, alternative equilibrium models of markets for financial transmission rights are formulated. The proposed equilibrium framework is more natural and flexible for modelling markets than the classic cost-minimization markets. Different markets for financial transmission rights are modelled, namely: i) forwards, ii) options, and iii) joint forwards and options. Moreover, one-period, multi-period and multi-round markets for forwards are derived. These equilibrium models are proposed to analyze the bidding strategies of market participants. The potential impact of bidders on congestion prices is modelled by means of conjectured transmission price functions.