Optimal short-term contract allocation using particle swarm optimization

In a liberalized electricity market, participants have several types of contracts to sell or buy electrical energy. Increasing electricity markets liquidity and, simultaneously, providing to market participants tools for hedging against spot electricity price were the two main reasons for the appearance of those types of contracts. However, due to the payoff nonlinearity characteristic of those contracts, deciding the optimal portfolio that best adjusts to their necessities becomes a hard task. This paper presents an optimization model applied to optimal contract allocation using Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). This optimization model consists on finding the portfolio that maximizes the electricity producer results and simultaneously allows the practice of the hedge against the volatility of the System Marginal Price (SMP). Risk management is considered through the consideration of a mean-variance optimization function. An example for a programming period is presented using spot, forward and options contracts. PSO performance in such type of problems is evaluated by comparing it with the Genetic Algorithms (GA).

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