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Electricity Markets in the United States: A Brief History, Current Operations, and Trends

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Smart Grid Control

Part of the book series: Power Electronics and Power Systems ((PEPS))

Abstract

The global energy landscape is witnessing a concerted effort toward grid modernization. Motivated by sustainability, skyrocketing demand for electricity, and the inability of a legacy infrastructure to accommodate distributed and intermittent resources, a cyber-physical infrastructure is emerging to embrace zero-emission energy assets such as wind and solar generation and results in a smart grid that delivers green, reliable, and affordable power. A key ingredient of this infrastructure is electricity markets, the first layer of decision-making in a smart grid. This chapter provides an overview of electricity markets which can be viewed as the backdrop for their emerging role in a modernized, cyber-enabled grid. Starting from a brief history of the electricity markets in the United States, the article proceeds to delineate the current market structure, and closes with a description of current trends and emerging directions.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Security constraints are additional constraints that ensure line flows do not exceed specified limits following the occurrence of any one of a set of specified contingencies.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by the NSF Award no. EFRI-1441301.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Smart Wires Inc., Union City, CA, USA

    Thomas R. Nudell

  2. MIT, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA

    Anuradha M. Annaswamy & David D’Achiardi

  3. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, 99352, USA

    Jianming Lian & Karanjit Kalsi

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  1. Thomas R. Nudell
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  2. Anuradha M. Annaswamy
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  3. Jianming Lian
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  5. David D’Achiardi
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Anuradha M. Annaswamy .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electronic Systems, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark

    Jakob Stoustrup

  2. Department of Mechanical Engineering, MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Anuradha Annaswamy

  3. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA

    Aranya Chakrabortty

  4. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA

    Zhihua Qu

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Nudell, T.R., Annaswamy, A.M., Lian, J., Kalsi, K., D’Achiardi, D. (2019). Electricity Markets in the United States: A Brief History, Current Operations, and Trends. In: Stoustrup, J., Annaswamy, A., Chakrabortty, A., Qu, Z. (eds) Smart Grid Control. Power Electronics and Power Systems. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98310-3_1

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