Energy Market Consulting
40 years of experience in the electricity industry
Headquartered in California, Dr. Paul Gribik provides domestic and international consulting services related to:
Developing new electricity markets
Formulating and incorporating new products to enhance the operation of existing markets
Assessing the impact of market design on participants’ strategies to operate profitably in electricity markets.
Dr. Gribik’s experience includes 25 years working with Independent System Operators on the design and evaluation of their market processes.
It also includes working with market participants on evaluating the benefits of participating in such markets and how they should participate.
Topics to Consider in Market Design
The Design of an electricity market must consider the interaction of a wide variety of disciplines to produce an efficient market and provide for the reliable operation of the electric system. The design must consider and balance elements of Economics, Power Engineering, Game Theory, Optimization Theory and Numerical Methods:
Economics to ensure efficient market scheduling, product pricing, and market settlements.
Power Engineering to ensure that the design results in reliable market operation by modeling power flows with enforcement of transmission constraints and reserve procurement and deployment.
Game Theory to ensure that the market provides generators, loads, traders and financial participants with the incentive to participate in the market and submit bids that accurately reflect true costs.
Optimization Theory and Numerical Methods to ensure that the resulting scheduling and pricing problems can be solved accurately and efficiently.
Examples of Market Design Work Undertaken
at Paul Gribik Consulting & at Prior Engagements
Improve Treatment of the Interaction of Different Market Products
We improved an ISO’s market model to remove the need for frequent manual intervention.
Improve Coordination between Two ISOs
Two ISO’s shared transmission facilities with each ISO having the right to use a defined share of the capacity on the shared facilities in its market. They sought to improve the process for coordinating the use of the available transmission capacity between their markets. We developed an optimization approach resulting in improved price convergence and increased efficiency.
Develop New Market Products & Processes
An ISO faced significant uncertainty in forecasting energy demands and setting the maximum dispatch limits of renewable resources such as wind and solar. We developed a product to allow the ISO to procure capacity that it could deploy to address the uncertainty. The new product resulted in lower costs, improved reliability, and improved pricing.
Develop Methodologies to Improve Price Signals
An ISO wanted to improve the ability of fast-start resources to set prices in its market. Fast-start resources may provide the most expensive energy in the market, yet may not be able to set price due to having high commitment related costs. We developed an approach that took into account such commitment related costs and improved price signals. Later, FERC ordered the other ISO’s to investigate implementing fast-start pricing in their markets.
Integrating regions with different greenhouse gas regulations in a single market.
Developing methods to allocate/auction financial transmission rights.
Modeling operation of energy storage facilities in ISO markets.
Modeling fuel limits in ISO markets.