Distributing resources in a market-based resource allocation system

Abstract

Disclosed herein are representative embodiments of methods, apparatus, and systems for distributing a resource (such as electricity) using a resource allocation system. In one exemplary embodiment, a plurality of requests for electricity are received from a plurality of end-use consumers. The requests indicate a requested quantity of electricity and a consumer-requested index value indicative of a maximum price a respective end-use consumer will pay for the requested quantity of electricity. A plurality of offers for supplying electricity are received from a plurality of resource suppliers. The offers indicate an offered quantity of electricity and a supplier-requested index value indicative of a minimum price for which a respective supplier will produce the offered quantity of electricity. A dispatched index value is computed at which electricity is to be supplied based at least in part on the consumer-requested index values and the supplier-requested index values.

Description

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION[0001]This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 61 / 194,596 filed on Sep. 29, 2008, and entitled “METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR ELECTRIC POWER GRID CONTROL,” which is hereby incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF GOVERNMENT SUPPORT[0002]This invention was made with Government support under Contract DE-ACO5-76RLO1830 awarded by the U.S. Department of Energy. The Government has certain rights in the invention.FIELD[0003]This application relates generally to the field of power grid management and control.BACKGROUND[0004]The demand for electricity is expected to continue its historical growth trend far into the future. To meet this growth with traditional approaches would require adding power generation, transmission, and distribution that may cost in the aggregate up to $2,000 / kW on the utility side of the meter. The amount of capacity in generation, transmission, and distribution generally must meet...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0007]Disclosed below are representative embodiments of methods, apparatus, and systems for distributing a resource (such as electricity). One of the disclosed embodiments is a nested, hierarchical resource allocation scheme that can be applied to any system. The resource allocation scheme can, for example, utilize a match of supply and demand at multiple levels and various locations within a transactive network, have supply resources that can be at the highest level but may also be at lower levels and have demand that varies with time and location in the network,

Problems solved by technology

Indeed, the severity of the demand-response shortage can

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