Tools for Assessment of Bidding into Electricity Auctions

Steven Puller and Ross Baldick

We have developed a public domain academic grade tool to assess the competitiveness of offers into electricity auctions.  The prototype is written in the Java language, and is released as open-source software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).  It considers transmission constraints.

To obtain the zipped tool and example file, download: Offer_Tool_zip

To run the tool, follow these instructions:

1. Install JRE or JDK.  This is available from http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp
2. Unzip the zip file to directory /bidTool_0_1.
3. Go to directory /bidTool_0_1.
4.  In command line mode, run "java -jar DCOPF.jar ercotCase20080402Demo", which runs the case ercotCase20080402Demo.txt located in /bidTool_0_1/DATA. If you do not specify the case name by running "java -jar DCOPF", this will run the testCase.txt by default.
5. The output report is generated in /bidTool_0_1/DATA/ercotCase20080402Demo_output.txt, and the data for plotting is stored in /bidTool_0_1/DATA/plotData.txt.
6. Open /bidTool_0_1BRPlot.html, which will plot the marginal cost and ex-post best offer curves specified in /bidTool_0_1/DATA/plotData.txt.