Economic Efficiency Analysis of Micro Energy Grid Considering Time-of-Use Gas Pricing

Abstract

The application of time-of-use (TOU) pricing in the electricity market has significant value, which can improve economic efficiency and promote effective management of resources. However, this pricing mechanism has not been applied and promoted in the gas market in China. In this paper, we propose a bi-level transaction model considering TOU gas pricing for analyzing the economic efficiency of micro energy grid (MEG) operation based on Game Theory. The multiple energies trading is conducted between the natural gas company (NGC), the MEG and energy users (EUs), which forms a hierarchical Stackelberg game model. We first analyze utilities and strategies of aforementioned participants, and derive the Stackelberg equilibrium (SE) analytically as a balanced solution that captures the equilibrium strategies of participants. Then, a mixed integer nonlinear programming is formulated to determine the optimal TOU gas prices delivering maximum NGC profit, the optimal energy sales prices corresponding to the MEG' SE utility, and the optimal load pattern for EUs. Finally, numerical experiments are conducted in two scenarios, which reveal that the TOU pricing can well balance the gas supply and demand, and has significant potential for improving the economic efficiency of the MEG.