Testing the Reliability of FERC's Wholesale Power Market Platform: An Agent-Based Computational Economics Approach

In April 2003 the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) proposed the Wholesale Power Market Platform (WPMP) for common adoption by U.S. wholesale power markets. The WPMP is a complicated market design that has been adopted in some regions of the U.S. but resisted in others on the grounds that its reliability has not yet been sufficiently tested. This article reports on the development of an agent-based computational framework for exploring the economic reliability of the WPMP. The key issue under study is the extent to which the WPMP is capable of sustaining efficient, orderly, and fair market outcomes over time despite attempts by market participants to gain advantage through strategic pricing, capacity withholding, and/or induced transmission congestion. Related work can be accessed at: http://www.econ.iastate.edu/tesfatsi/AMESMarketHome.htm