Solving Mixed Strategy Nash-Cournot Equilibria under Generation and Transmission Constraints in Electricity Market

Generation capacities and transmission line constraints in a competitive electricity market make it troublesome to compute Nash Equilibrium (NE) for analyzing participants ’ strategic generation quantities. The NE can cause a mixed strategy NE rather than a pure strategy NE resulting in a more complicated computation of NE, especially in a multiplayer game. A two-level hierarchical optimization problem is used to model competition among multiple participants. There are difficulties in using a mathematical programming approach to solve a mixed strategy NE. This paper presents heuristics applied to the mathematical programming method for dealing with the constraints on generation capacities and transmission line flows. A new formulation based on the heuristics is provided with a set of linear and nonlinear equations, and an algorithm is suggested for using the heuristics and the newly-formulated equations.