Mathematical programming and electricity markets

The electric power industry in Europe and all over the world is undertaking major regulatory and operational changes. The underlying rationale behind all these changes is to move from a centralized operation approach to a competitive one. That is, the understanding of power supply as a public service is being replaced by the notion that a competitive market is a more appropriate framework to supply reliable and cheap electric energy to consumers. In some cases, the aforementioned transition process has included the privatization of power utilities. This new framework requires new tools and procedures, and some of these procedures drastically differ from traditional ones. Therefore, new challenging mathematical programming and operations research problems naturally arise in this context. This paper provides a review of some of these problems, particularly operational problems spanning a time horizon from one day to one year. The approach adopted emphasizes mathematical programming issues, describing the structure and characteristics of these problems and suggesting appropriate solution techniques.