Customer load profile-based pricing strategy of retailers with generation assets in retail markets

Abstract

The integrated architecture of generation and retail is common in a variety of places around the world. The pricing strategy is extremely important to retailers, which significantly affects their profit. ToU and RTP are lack of individuation and the price signal of average cost per kWh is not straightforward to customers. The contribution of a customer's load profile to a generator's utilization rate should be fully considered in retailers' pricing strategy. Therefore, in this paper, a general method to quantitatively evaluate the contribution of a customer's load profile to a generator's utilization rate is firstly proposed. The system or regional typical load profile is chosen as the benchmark. The pricing strategy of retailers with generation assets in retail market based on load profile is then proposed. The load profile-based pricing can provide incentives to customers to optimize their consumption behaviors so that the utilization rate of the generator and the profit of the retailer will increase. Case study indicates that the proposed pricing strategy is feasible and fair to all the market participants.