Professional Development in Electricity Markets with Spreadsheet Models

Abstract

Thischapter presents a case study illustrating the physical dispatch al-gorithm used by Australia’s electricity market operator (AEMO) to determine which power plants to dispatch into the grid and the resultant electricity spot price. The models are similar to case studies applied by the author in professional development for training a disparate audience about the nature of the deregulated Australian Na-tional Electricity Market (NEM). This chapter addresses the particular experiences of the author in delivering professional development education to an area of industry focusing in energy and finance. It has been found that the commonality amongst a diverse range of workshop participants is their understanding of Excel, and it forms an ideal mechanism to communicate technical and mathematical concepts. Although highly simplified, the implementation exhibits the key concepts of price-setting and dispatch instructions in the Australian electricity market (NEM).

Keywords: National Electricity Market (NEM), dispatch algorithm

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