Managing Price Uncertainty in Prosumer-Centric Energy Trading: A Prospect-Theoretic Stackelberg Game Approach

摘要

In this paper, the problem of energy trading between smart grid prosumers,who can simultaneously consume and produce energy, and a grid power company isstudied. The problem is formulated as a single-leader, multiple-followerStackelberg game between the power company and multiple prosumers. In thisgame, the power company acts as a leader who determines the pricing strategythat maximizes its profits, while the prosumers act as followers who react bychoosing the amount of energy to buy or sell so as to optimize their currentand future profits. The proposed game accounts for each prosumer's subjectivedecision when faced with the uncertainty of profits, induced by the randomfuture price. In particular, the framing effect, from the framework of prospecttheory (PT), is used to account for each prosumer's valuation of its gains andlosses with respect to an individual utility reference point. The referencepoint changes between prosumers and stems from their past experience and futureaspirations of profits. The followers' noncooperative game is shown to admit aunique pure-strategy Nash equilibrium (NE) under classical game theory (CGT)which is obtained using a fully distributed algorithm. The results are extendedto account for the case of PT using algorithmic solutions that can achieve anNE under certain conditions. Simulation results show that the total grid loadvaries significantly with the prosumers' reference point and theirloss-aversion level. In addition, it is shown that the power company's profitsconsiderably decrease when it fails to account for the prosumers' subjectiveperceptions under PT.