Artificial Trading for US Wholesale Electric Power Market

In the US wholesale power market, electric power producers trade among themselves as well as with power-marketing and power-distribution companies. The wholesale power market comprises the world’s largest commodity market. The growth in power trading is due to the ongoing deregulation of the electric power industry. Most of deregulation scenarios indicate a further separation of power production from transmission and retailing, along with production and retailing, opened to more competition. Unfortunately, the power trading mechanism is not clearly investigated in the level that we can understand and predict a price change in the wholesale market. This study investigates such an exploration of the price change in the US power market. Computer software developed by Sueyoshi and Tadiparthi (2004) includes various analytical and numerical techniques and forecasting methods. Using the computer software, we investigate how traders determine power prices in the wholesale market and how the price change is occurring under different economic and engineering environments.