Energy systems are in transition towards more sustainable generation portfolios. In the envisioned smart grid generation will primarily depend on renewable power sources making uncertain quantities of electricity available, the delivery of which cannot be guaranteed. Current electricity tariffs promise certain delivery, and are thus not well-suited to trade uncertain quantities. However, if not traded the electricity might need to be curtailed, foregoing potential benefits for both supply and demand sides. We propose to adopt service level agreements (SLAs) that comprise quantity, reliability, and price, for electricity trading in settings where supply depends on volatile power sources. We define a characterization of the value degradation of tolerant and critical buyers with regards to the uncertainty of electricity delivery generalizing the widely used value of lost load (VoLL). This captures buyers’ varying abilities to cope with uncertainty. We consider allocating SLAs to buyers using either a sequential second-price auction or the combinatorial Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) mechanism that is known to elicit truthful bids, and discuss the settings in which we can obtain truthfulness in the sequential setting. In addition, we empirically compare their performance and demonstrate that VCG dominates alternative allocations and vastly improves the efficiency of the proposed system, when compared to baseline allocations that only use the VoLL. This article hence contributes an essential component to the future smart grid by facilitating distributed energy trading under uncertainty.

中文翻译：

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通过SLA进行可再生电力交易

能源系统正在向更加可持续的发电产品组合过渡。在设想的智能电网中，发电将主要取决于可再生能源，从而使不确定的电量可用，无法保证其供电。当前的电价承诺一定的交付量，因此不适合交易不确定的数量。但是，如果不进行交易，则可能需要减少电力供应，这既会给供需双方带来潜在的好处。我们建议在电源依赖于不稳定电源的环境中进行电力交易时，采用包含数量，可靠性和价格的服务水平协议（SLA）。关于电力输送的不确定性，我们定义了宽容和关键购买者的价值下降的特征，从而概括了广泛使用的空载价值（VoLL）。这捕获了买家应对不确定性的不同能力。我们考虑使用顺序第二价格拍卖或已知引发真实出价的组合Vickrey-Clarke-Groves（VCG）机制将SLA分配给买方，并讨论可以在顺序设定中获得真实性的设置。此外，与仅使用VoLL的基线分配相比，我们从经验上比较了它们的性能，并证明了VCG主导了替代分配，并极大地提高了所提出系统的效率。