A real-time pricing scheme considering load uncertainty and price competition in smart grid market

As a powerful tool of Demand Response (DR) techniques in smart grid market, Real-time Pricing (RTP) may optimize the electricity consumption pattern of users and improve the efficiency of electricity market. In this paper, a multi-leader-follower Stackelberg Game (SG) based on RTP is established to model the strategic interaction behavior between multiple electricity retailers and multiple users while simultaneously considering the power load uncertainty of users and the price competition among electricity retailers. In the game model, electricity retailers aim to seek their revenue maximization while the optimal power consumption competition among the users is taken into account. Lagrange multiplier method is utilized to solve the Nash Equilibriums (NE) of two non-cooperative games, and the closed-form optimal solution is obtained, then the Stackelberg Equilibrium (SE) consisting of the optimal real-time prices of electricity retailers and the power consumption of users is given. Finally, the numerical analysis results verify that the proposed scheme can reduce the real-time electricity price and increase the users' satisfaction under feasible constraint, which shows the effectiveness and better performance of proposed RTP scheme.